Richard Pettigrew (University of Bristol): 'Contractualism, Prioritarianism, and Universalizability'

#LSEChoiceGroup​​​ | 4 February 2026 Richard Pettigrew (University of Bristol): 'Contractualism, Prioritarianism, and Universalizability' Abstract: I explore a new style of argument for prioritarianism or utilitarianism as moral axiologies. The central idea is that the value the welfarist assigns to a state of the world should not lie unnecessarily far from the utilities of the individuals who exist at that state. I describe various ways we might measure distance from a candidate value to the individuals' utilities, characterize a family of such measures, and explain which versions of welfarism follow when we use them. For some, it's utilitarianism; for others, it's different instances of prioritarianism. I’ll discuss broadly contractualist versions of this argument, as well as versions that build on R. M. Hare’s universalisability argument. Richard Pettigrew is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bristol. #Philosophy #LSEPhilosophy #PartOfLSE #LSE