Douglas W. Portmore

Douglas W. Portmore is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Currently, he also serves as Editor-in-Chief of Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political and Legal Philosophy. His research focuses on morality, rationality, and the interconnections between the two, but he has also written on well-being, moral worth, posthumous harm, moral responsibility, and the non-identity problem. Lately, he’s been working on a book entitled Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends. Kantsequentialism is a new theory that combines the best elements of both utilitarianism and Kantianism. According to it, our obligations to adopt certain ends (i.e., our telic obligations) are more fundamental than our obligations to perform certain actions (our praxic obligations).