Demandingness Objection

1. Introduction

The Demandingness Objection is a family of arguments claiming that some moral theories make requirements on individuals that are unreasonably burdensome. It maintains that a theory becomes implausible if, in ordinary circumstances, it insists on large, repeated sacrifices of personal well-being, projects, or relationships whenever doing so would improve overall outcomes.

At its core, the objection asks how much morality may legitimately demand of us. It is typically directed at maximizing, strongly impartial theories—especially classical act-utilitarianism—that appear to require agents constantly to promote the best possible consequences, no matter the personal cost.

A central concern is that such theories collapse the distinction between what is morally required and what is supererogatory (admirable but beyond duty). If donating most of one’s income to effective charities or giving up central life plans in order to help others is morally required whenever it would do more good, then a wide range of ordinary, self-regarding behavior appears morally wrong.

The objection functions both as:

• A diagnostic tool for evaluating moral theories (asking whether they impose a reasonable burden), and
• A motivating pressure for theoretical revisions (for example, weakening maximization, building in permissions to favor oneself, or relocating duties to institutions).

Supporters of the objection often appeal to widely shared intuitions about fairness, personal integrity, and the limits of sacrifice. Critics question whether these intuitions should constrain moral theory, suggesting that genuine morality might be far more demanding than common sense allows. The resulting debate has shaped discussions in normative ethics, applied ethics, and political philosophy, and continues to structure contemporary disputes about beneficence, global poverty, and the role of moral ideals in ordinary life.

2. Origin and Attribution

There is no single originator of the Demandingness Objection. Instead, it developed cumulatively in twentieth-century debates over utilitarianism and, later, strong principles of beneficence.

Early attributions

A frequently cited early formulation is J. O. Urmson’s 1958 article:

"

“It is an essential feature of the concept of a saint or hero that his behavior is in some way extraordinary, and that not merely in being unusual or rare.”

— J. O. Urmson, Saints and Heroes (1958)

Urmson’s analysis of saints and heroes is often read as highlighting the pressure that utilitarianism exerts to treat saintly and heroic sacrifice as obligatory, thereby making morality too demanding.

Later, Peter Singer’s article:

"

“If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it.”

— Peter Singer, Famine, Affluence, and Morality (1972)

sparked extensive discussion of how demanding morality can be, with many critics presenting their reactions explicitly as a “demandingness” worry.

Key contributors

A number of authors are associated with systematic formulations of the objection:

There is, however, disagreement about whose work first encapsulates the objection in something like its modern form. Some scholars emphasize Urmson’s role; others regard the post-Singer literature as the point at which “the demandingness objection” became a named and self-conscious argument.

Because of this dispersed development, contemporary discussions typically attribute the objection to a tradition rather than a single philosopher, while acknowledging Urmson and Singer’s critics as especially influential in shaping it.

3. Historical Context and Early Formulations

The Demandingness Objection arose in a context shaped by mid-twentieth-century debates about classical utilitarianism, supererogation, and emerging concerns about global inequality.

Background in utilitarian debates

Nineteenth-century utilitarians such as Bentham and Mill already proposed highly impartial, maximizing ethics, but early critics rarely framed their concerns explicitly in terms of “demandingness.” Instead, they emphasized issues such as justice, rights, and the calculation of consequences. Over time, however, commentators noted that utilitarianism seemed to render a wide range of self-regarding or partial actions morally impermissible.

By the mid-twentieth century, analytic moral philosophy had begun to focus on the structure of moral concepts, including obligation and supererogation. Within this framework, the question of how far moral requirements extend came into sharper focus.

Urmson and the duty/supererogation boundary

Urmson’s “Saints and Heroes” (1958) is often treated as an early, explicit formulation of a demandingness concern. By examining cases of extreme self-sacrifice and moral heroism, Urmson argued that traditional utilitarianism struggles to distinguish between acts of duty and acts of exceptional goodness. This pressure, he suggested, makes utilitarianism implausibly demanding, because it appears to reclassify heroic acts as minimally required.

Singer and famine relief

The publication of Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” (1972) shifted the discussion into applied ethics. Singer’s claim that affluent individuals are morally required to give substantial resources to relieve global suffering generated substantial criticism. Many responses argued not only with his empirical or practical assumptions, but also with the idea that morality could legitimately require sacrificing most of one’s income or major life projects.

These reactions crystallized into what came to be labeled the Demandingness Objection, now applied both to utilitarianism and to Singer-style beneficence principles.

Consolidation into a standard objection

By the late twentieth century, philosophers such as Samuel Scheffler, Shelly Kagan, Liam Murphy, and Tim Mulgan were explicitly discussing “demandingness” as a criterion by which to assess normative theories. The objection thus became a standard part of the dialectic in normative ethics, shaping discussions not only of utilitarianism but also of contractualism, virtue ethics, and pluralist theories.

4. The Argument Stated

In its canonical form, the Demandingness Objection asserts that a moral theory is unacceptable if it requires more sacrifice than it is reasonable to expect from ordinary agents. It is usually presented as a conditional critique: if a theory entails highly burdensome obligations across typical circumstances, then that counts heavily against the theory.

A representative statement can be reconstructed along the following lines:

1. Reasonableness constraint: A plausible moral theory should not impose obligations that are excessively demanding—such as constant, large-scale self-sacrifice—as a normal requirement of moral agency.

2. Demandingness condition: A theory is excessively demanding if, in a wide range of everyday situations, it requires agents to forgo central life projects, relationships, or substantial portions of their well-being whenever doing so would significantly promote morally valuable outcomes.

3. Application premise: Certain theories—paradigmatically act-utilitarianism and other maximizing consequentialist views, along with some strong principles of beneficence—do in fact require such far-reaching sacrifices as a matter of routine moral duty.

4. Defect claim: When a theory is excessively demanding in this way, that is a serious theoretical defect, at least prima facie sufficient to justify rejection or major revision.

From these claims, proponents infer that theories with very high demandingness levels should either be abandoned, modified (for instance, via satisficing or agent-centered options), or confined to an idealized moral standpoint rather than taken as a literal guide to everyday obligation.

Different authors emphasize different aspects of this argument. Some stress fairness in distribution of moral burdens; others focus on psychological feasibility or on the preservation of personal integrity and meaningful life plans. But they converge on the idea that unrelenting, open-ended duties to promote the best outcomes undermine a theory’s plausibility.

5. Logical Structure and Form

The Demandingness Objection is most often cast as a reductio ad absurdum: starting from a moral theory’s principles, it derives a conclusion about extreme demands that seems absurd or unacceptable, and then uses this as a reason to reject or revise the theory.

Standard reductio structure

A simplified logical structure is:

1. A theory T (e.g., act-utilitarianism) entails that agents are required, in ordinary circumstances, to make very large, ongoing sacrifices whenever doing so would maximize the good.
2. Very large, ongoing sacrifices across ordinary life are excessively demanding, i.e., more than morality can reasonably require.
3. Any theory that imposes excessively demanding requirements is normatively defective or unacceptable.
4. Therefore, T is normatively defective or unacceptable.

This form relies on a substantive bridge principle (step 3) connecting demandingness to theory evaluation.

Alternative logical forms

Philosophers have reconstructed the objection in several other ways:

Some proponents formulate the objection comparatively, arguing that between two otherwise plausible theories, the less demanding one is preferable, all else equal. Others treat demandingness as introducing a threshold: beyond a certain point, added moral benefit does not justify increased obligation.

Debate thus centers not on the formal structure—often straightforward—but on the justificatory status of premises about what is “excessive,” “reasonable,” or “feasible,” and on whether those notions should constrain ideal moral theory at all.

6. Demandingness and Moral Intuition

The force of the Demandingness Objection typically depends on moral intuitions about what can reasonably be required of agents. Much of the debate concerns how, and how far, these intuitions should guide theory assessment.

Intuitive pull of limited demands

Many people judge it permissible to retain significant portions of their income, time, and energy for personal projects, even while acknowledging severe needs elsewhere. Likewise, heroic actions—such as risking one’s life to save strangers—are widely praised but not ordinarily regarded as required. These shared reactions underpin the idea that morality includes a limit to what may be demanded.

Proponents of the objection argue that when a theory conflicts sharply with these intuitions—for example by classifying most non-altruistic expenditures as wrong—it thereby loses credibility.

Different uses of intuition

Intuitions about demandingness can play several distinct roles:

Some philosophers (e.g., Scheffler, Murphy) treat demandingness intuitions as important constraints any plausible theory must accommodate. Others (e.g., Kagan) argue that these intuitions may reflect self-interest or cultural bias and therefore may not be reliable guides to the true moral standard.

Reflective equilibrium and revision

Within a reflective equilibrium methodology, demandingness judgments are weighed alongside other intuitions—about equality, beneficence, rights, etc. The resulting equilibrium may:

• Preserve strong limits on moral demands,
• Weaken those limits while still recognizing some threshold, or
• Substantially revise common-sense views, accepting that morality is far more demanding than initially thought.

The relationship between demandingness and intuition thus remains contested: some see these intuitions as central evidence, while others view them as precisely what challenging theories invite us to reconsider.

7. Target Theories: Utilitarianism and Consequentialism

The Demandingness Objection is most prominently directed at utilitarian and more broadly consequentialist theories, especially in their maximizing forms.

Act-utilitarianism

Classical act-utilitarianism holds that an action is right if and only if it produces at least as much overall good as any alternative. Because there is almost always some better use of one’s time or resources, this view appears to require:

• Extensive donation of income to effective causes,
• Devotion of one’s career to maximizing welfare, and
• Sacrifice of personal relationships or projects whenever doing so leads to greater aggregate benefit.

Critics argue that this yields a picture of moral life in which nearly all ordinary choices are wrong unless optimized for utility, thereby making the theory heavily vulnerable to the demandingness charge.

Maximizing consequentialism more broadly

Beyond act-utilitarianism, any maximizing consequentialism that directs agents always to choose the best available outcome faces similar worries. This includes:

Strong principles of beneficence

Even non-consequentialist theories can become targets when they endorse strong cosmopolitan duties of aid, particularly in global poverty contexts. Principles that require substantial, ongoing sacrifices to prevent serious harm are often criticized as functionally indistinguishable, in demandingness terms, from utilitarian prescriptions.

Degrees of vulnerability

Not all forms of consequentialism are equally vulnerable. Satisficing or threshold versions explicitly weaken maximization, while some rule-consequentialist or indirect approaches attempt to justify more moderate everyday requirements by appealing to long-run or system-level consequences. The Demandingness Objection has therefore also motivated a range of internal modifications of consequentialist frameworks, discussed elsewhere in this entry.

8. Duties, Supererogation, and Moral Limits

A central theme in demandingness debates is the boundary between duty (what morality requires) and supererogation (what goes beyond obligation). The objection often claims that overly demanding theories blur or erase this distinction.

The traditional picture

In much of common-sense morality and many non-consequentialist theories:

• Duties include obligations such as not harming others, keeping promises, and providing basic help when doing so is not overly costly.
• Supererogatory acts include substantial sacrifices, extensive charity, or heroic rescues that are admirable but not required.

On this picture, there is an implicit limit to moral demands: once one’s duties are met, further sacrifice remains optional, however praiseworthy.

Overdemandingness and the erasure of supererogation

Demandingness critics argue that maximizing theories treat many paradigmatically supererogatory actions as obligatory, because they yield more good than alternatives. If donating half one’s income does more good than donating ten percent, then the latter appears morally wrong on strict maximizing views.

This leads to the charge that such theories are overdemanding: they collapse the conceptual and practical space for supererogation, rendering ordinary levels of beneficence morally deficient.

Competing accounts of moral limits

Different theoretical responses reconceive moral limits in varied ways:

Some philosophers argue that the very notion of a fixed upper limit on what morality may demand is suspect. Others maintain that without some principled boundary, moral theory risks becoming unlivable or alien to ordinary agents.

The Demandingness Objection thus operates in close connection with disputes about whether and how morality distinguishes between what we must do and what it is merely good or heroic to do.

9. Key Variations of the Demandingness Objection

While unified by concern over excessive moral burdens, the Demandingness Objection appears in several distinct versions, each emphasizing different aspects of what makes a theory problematic.

1. Cost-to-agent demandingness

This version focuses on the magnitude of sacrifice a theory requires. A theory is objectionably demanding if it routinely obliges agents to:

• Give up major life projects or careers,
• Renounce close personal relationships, or
• Accept substantial reductions in happiness or well-being.

The guiding thought is that such costs exceed what can fairly be expected, even for morally conscientious individuals.

2. Demandingness as fairness of burdens

Another strand, influenced by Liam Murphy and others, stresses the fair distribution of moral burdens. On this view, a theory is demanding not only when burdens are large, but also when they are unevenly imposed—e.g., requiring a few conscientious people to take on enormous sacrifice because others fail to comply.

Here the objection targets theories that do not adequately adjust individual requirements when others are not doing their share.

3. Psychological and motivational demandingness

A further variation emphasizes human motivational capacities. A theory may be criticized if:

• Its demands are practically unsustainable over a lifetime, or
• It presupposes levels of altruistic motivation that are unrealistic for most agents.

This line of argument treats feasibility and action-guidance as central constraints on what can count as a plausible moral requirement.

4. Integrity and personal identity demandingness

Following themes associated with Bernard Williams and others, some versions focus on personal integrity. A theory is said to be too demanding if it requires agents to abandon projects and commitments central to their sense of identity, leaving little room for self-authored lives.

Comparative overview

These variations can be combined in a single critique, or emphasized separately, contributing to the richness and complexity of demandingness debates.

10. Standard Objections and Critical Responses

The Demandingness Objection itself has been vigorously contested. Critics question both its premises and its overall role in theory evaluation. Several standard objections have emerged.

Commonsense conservatism

One influential criticism, associated with Shelly Kagan, holds that the objection simply reasserts commonsense morality as a non-negotiable standard. If our everyday intuitions are themselves shaped by self-interest or limited imagination, then appealing to them as a constraint on theory construction may be question-begging. According to this view, the demandingness objection risks blocking moral progress by elevating existing practice above critical scrutiny.

Proponents of the objection reply that while intuitions can be revised, they still provide important data for moral theorizing and cannot all be dismissed without undermining the methodology of reflective equilibrium.

Moral seriousness and urgency

Another criticism, pressed by figures like Peter Singer and Peter Unger, is that the objection can trivialize grave moral problems. By treating agents’ comfort, consumer choices, or leisure as strong counterweights to preventing severe suffering or death, the objection may fail to take others’ interests seriously. Critics suggest that when the stakes for others are extremely high, demands on the affluent may legitimately be very stringent.

Supporters of the objection often respond by distinguishing between acknowledging the moral importance of aiding others and claiming that this importance extends to strict obligation for very high levels of sacrifice.

Supererogation skepticism

Some critics challenge the underlying duty/supererogation framework. If it turns out that what is commonly classified as supererogatory is actually obligatory, then the demandingness objection may be premised on a mistaken moral psychology. On this view, high demands do not count against a theory; they instead reveal that common-sense judgments about optional goodness are too restrictive.

Defenders argue, in turn, that eliminating or drastically shrinking the supererogatory category leads to an implausible moral landscape where nearly everyone is constantly failing.

Subjectivity of demandingness standards

A further objection emphasizes the context-dependence of what is judged “too demanding.” Cultural norms, individual resilience, and social structures all shape perceptions of burden. Critics claim that, without an independent and principled account of reasonable demands, invoking “overdemandingness” risks becoming subjective and indeterminate.

Responses include attempts to specify thresholds using ideas such as strains of commitment, fair shares, or normal human motivation, though these proposals themselves remain contested.

These standard criticisms have prompted increasingly nuanced articulations of the Demandingness Objection and have encouraged proponents to clarify whether they are appealing to fairness, feasibility, integrity, or other values when deeming a theory too demanding.

11. Proposed Theoretical Resolutions

In response to the Demandingness Objection, philosophers have developed a range of strategies to reconcile robust moral concern for others with limits on individual burdens. These resolutions differ in whether they aim to weaken demands, reinterpret them, or relocate them.

Satisficing consequentialism

Satisficing consequentialists reject the requirement to always maximize value. Instead, they posit a “good enough” threshold:

• Actions meeting or exceeding this threshold are morally permissible.
• Actions below it are wrong.
• Acts that go well beyond it may be supererogatory.

This explicitly lowers the level of individual demands by allowing agents to retain significant resources and pursue personal projects once they have done enough to promote the good.

Agent-centered prerogatives and options

Another response, developed notably by Samuel Scheffler, introduces agent-centered prerogatives: built-in permissions for individuals to give special weight to their own interests and relationships. On such views:

• Sacrificing more than required remains morally good,
• But agents are not obligated to prioritize impersonal value maximization over central personal commitments.

This preserves a meaningful space for both supererogation and personal integrity.

Ideal vs nonideal theory distinctions

Approaches influenced by Liam Murphy and John Rawls distinguish between ideal moral principles and their nonideal application. A theory may endorse high-level demands in a world of full compliance and just institutions, while in actual nonideal conditions, requirements are moderated by feasibility, fairness of burdens, and motivational limits.

On this view, demandingness is addressed not by altering ultimate values, but by adjusting what can reasonably be asked of individuals here and now.

Institutional and collective solutions

Some proposals focus less on changing the moral standard and more on redistributing burdens through institutions. If effective social, political, and economic structures are created, then:

• High moral demands may still exist at the collective level,
• Yet the per-capita demands on individuals are reduced to manageable levels.

This strategy is prominent in later effective altruist and political philosophy discussions.

Revisionist accounts of obligation and supererogation

Other theorists accept that morality may indeed be highly demanding but advocate a more nuanced classification of obligations, distinguishing, for instance, between:

• Stringent obligations in contexts of severe, avoidable harm, and
• Weaker or context-dependent obligations in everyday choices.

These revisionist accounts often redraw the line between duty and supererogation rather than minimizing demands outright.

Collectively, these strategies illustrate the diversity of ways in which moral theorists attempt to respond to demandingness concerns while preserving core ethical commitments.

12. Applications to Global Poverty and Effective Altruism

Debates about demandingness have been especially prominent in discussions of global poverty and the Effective Altruism (EA) movement, where questions about how much affluent individuals ought to sacrifice are practical as well as theoretical.

Global poverty obligations

Following Singer’s 1972 argument about famine relief, many philosophers have argued that those in affluent societies have significant duties to assist the global poor. Demandingness concerns arise when such duties are interpreted as requiring:

• Substantial, recurring donations of income,
• Choosing careers primarily for their impact on global welfare, or
• Major lifestyle changes to free resources for aid.

Some accounts, such as those of Garrett Cullity and Liam Murphy, attempt to balance strong duties to assist with limits grounded in fairness, personal cost, and the cumulative burden of multiple causes.

Effective Altruism and high-impact giving

The EA movement encourages individuals to maximize the positive impact of their resources, often by donating a significant share of income to highly cost-effective interventions. While many participants adopt moderate giving norms (e.g., 10%), some prominent advocates have defended much higher levels of sacrifice.

This has prompted demandingness-based critiques, including:

• Concerns that EA implicitly portrays non-maximizing agents as morally deficient,
• Worries about burnout and psychological strain from sustained high demands, and
• Questions about whether movement messaging should present its recommendations as obligations or aspirational ideals.

Institutional vs individual focus

Critics also argue that a focus on individual obligations may be excessively demanding if it fails to account for the role of institutions. They contend that structural injustices and global economic arrangements should bear much of the moral burden, reducing what is asked of any single agent.

Supporters of strong individual duties reply that, given current institutional failures, individuals still face urgent obligations to act, even if the long-term goal is systemic reform.

Comparative positions

Global poverty and EA discussions thus serve as test cases for the practical implications of the Demandingness Objection, illustrating how abstract debates about moral limits translate into concrete guidance on giving, career choice, and lifestyle.

13. Demandingness, Institutions, and Nonideal Theory

Demandingness questions have increasingly been framed within the context of nonideal theory and the role of institutions in distributing moral burdens.

Ideal vs nonideal demands

In an idealized world—with just institutions and full compliance—individual obligations might be modest because social structures ensure that needs are met. However, in our nonideal circumstances, many theorists argue that:

• Demands on individuals must be adjusted to reflect background injustice and widespread noncompliance, and
• Moral principles must account for actual human motivation, information constraints, and social conditions.

This perspective suggests that a theory’s seeming overdemandingness may be partly an artifact of applying ideal principles directly to nonideal settings.

Strains of commitment

John Rawls’s notion of “strains of commitment” has influenced how philosophers think about the reasonableness of demands. A principle is unacceptable, on this view, if people cannot reasonably be expected to support and comply with it over time, given their circumstances and capacities.

Applied to demandingness, this idea supports the claim that moral and political principles should be stable for the right reasons, and should not require levels of sacrifice that would predictably erode support or compliance.

Institutional distribution of burdens

Some approaches emphasize shifting significant responsibilities from individuals to collective agents:

• States, international organizations, and economic institutions may be better positioned to address structural injustices.
• Properly designed institutions can spread burdens across large populations, reducing the per-person demandingness.

On this view, what appears as an excessive individual moral demand may be better understood as a call for institutional reform.

Fairness under partial compliance

Liam Murphy and others have developed models in which:

• Under full compliance, individuals have certain obligations (e.g., contributing a fair share to just institutions).
• Under partial compliance, those who do comply are not automatically required to shoulder the slack indefinitely.

This addresses a distinctive form of demandingness that arises when some agents’ failures threaten to place disproportionate burdens on others.

By incorporating nonideal conditions and institutional structures into moral theorizing, these approaches aim to refine how demandingness is assessed, distinguishing between demands that are genuinely unreasonable and those that appear onerous only in the absence of appropriate collective arrangements.

14. Implications for Moral Psychology and Motivation

The Demandingness Objection has significant implications for moral psychology and theories of motivation, raising questions about how moral requirements relate to human capacities and dispositions.

Feasibility and motivational limits

Many versions of the objection implicitly rely on claims about what agents can sustainably do:

• A morality that requires near-constant self-sacrifice may prove psychologically unsustainable, leading to guilt, burnout, or moral disengagement.
• If most people predictably fail to meet extreme standards, critics argue that such standards may not be appropriate as ordinary obligations.

This aligns demandingness concerns with broader debates about whether moral “ought” implies “can” or, more weakly, “can without extraordinary strain.”

Moral aspiration vs obligation

Some philosophers distinguish between aspirational ideals and strict duties. Very high standards—such as devoting one’s life to altruistic causes—may be psychologically intelligible as aspirations, even if they are too demanding to function as universal obligations.

From this perspective, the demandingness objection highlights the need to match normative categories (duty, ideal, supererogation) with realistic motivational expectations.

Character and virtue

Virtue-ethical approaches sometimes interpret demandingness in terms of what can be expected of a person with good character:

• Certain virtues, like generosity or benevolence, may incline individuals toward substantial sacrifice.
• Yet a well-rounded virtuous life is also thought to include self-care, personal relationships, and projects.

Demandingness debates thus intersect with questions about what a psychologically healthy, flourishing moral agent looks like, and whether extremely sacrificial lives are paradigms of virtue or examples of moral one-sidedness.

Moral education and guilt

If moral theories set very demanding standards, this may influence:

• How people interpret their own moral failures, and
• How moral education frames responsibility and blame.

Some worry that highly demanding theories encourage chronic guilt or alienation from ordinary desires. Others suggest that adjusting expectations downward risks moral complacency.

The psychological consequences of endorsing a demanding or less demanding morality therefore become part of the overall assessment of moral theories, without by themselves settling whether those theories are normatively correct.

15. Contemporary Debates and Open Questions

Contemporary work on the Demandingness Objection explores both refinements of the original argument and broader questions about its place in moral theory.

How weighty is demandingness?

One ongoing debate concerns the normative status of demandingness considerations: Are they decisive constraints on theory design, or just one factor among many?

• Some authors treat excessive demandingness as near-conclusive evidence against a theory.
• Others regard it as a cost that must be balanced against gains in other domains, such as coherence with moral equality or responsiveness to severe suffering.

This disagreement affects how sharply the objection is thought to limit utilitarian and other impartial theories.

Objective vs subjective demandingness

Another issue concerns the distinction between objective and subjective demandingness:

• Objectively, a theory might require large sacrifices, even if agents are unaware of them.
• Subjectively, a theory may feel highly demanding depending on agents’ beliefs, motivations, and social environment.

Open questions include how to measure demandingness, and whether subjective burden should matter as much as objective cost in evaluating theories.

Universal vs context-sensitive limits

Debates also persist about whether there exist universal thresholds of reasonable moral demand, or whether appropriate limits vary by culture, role, or historical context. Some argue for context-sensitive standards tied to social roles (e.g., parents, professionals, citizens), while others seek more general principles, such as fair shares or strains of commitment.

Interplay with other constraints

Demandingness interacts with other evaluative criteria, including:

• Respect for rights and agency
• Impartial concern for all persons
• Stability and feasibility
• Virtue and flourishing

How these criteria should be balanced remains contested, and different theories integrate demandingness constraints in diverse ways.

Future directions

Ongoing research examines demandingness in new contexts—such as climate ethics, longtermism, and digital-era obligations—as well as formal tools for modeling burden and fairness. Whether the Demandingness Objection will ultimately lead to convergent views about the limits of morality, or instead highlight enduring pluralism about moral expectations, remains an open question.

16. Legacy and Historical Significance

The Demandingness Objection has become a standard tool in contemporary moral philosophy, influencing both how theories are constructed and how they are evaluated.

Impact on normative ethics

In normative ethics, the objection has:

• Prompted major revisions of consequentialism, including satisficing views, rule- and indirect consequentialisms, and hybrid theories that incorporate agent-centered permissions.
• Encouraged non-consequentialist frameworks—such as pluralist deontology and contractualism—to articulate more clearly how they balance duties to others with room for personal projects.

Demandingness has thus joined criteria like consistency with moral equality, respect for rights, and fit with considered judgments as a central evaluative dimension for ethical theories.

Influence beyond theory choice

The objection’s reach extends into:

In each domain, questions about how much can reasonably be asked of individuals and groups have become integral to normative analysis.

Reframing moral ideals

Historically, the objection has contributed to a more self-conscious distinction between:

• Obligatory norms appropriate for general guidance and institutional enforcement, and
• Aspirational ideals that, while morally admirable, may exceed what can be fairly required.

This reframing has influenced public discourse about charity, activism, and civic engagement, as well as internal philosophical debates about the place of moral saints and heroes in ethical theory.

Continuing significance

The Demandingness Objection continues to shape discussions of emerging topics—such as obligations to future generations, responsibilities in an interconnected global economy, and the ethics of high-impact philanthropy. Its historical trajectory—from a concern about utilitarianism’s treatment of saints and heroes to a pervasive criterion in theory assessment—illustrates how a focused philosophical worry can develop into a broad lens for understanding the limits and aspirations of morality.