Key Arguments

• Parfit summarizes Narveson’s core reversal of the Total view: "On his view, it is not good that people exist because their lives contain happiness. Rather, happiness is good because it is good for people." This makes value wholly derivative from its being good for existing persons.
• Narveson "also claims that, in causing someone to exist, we cannot be benefiting this person," so existence cannot itself count as a benefit to the created individual.
• From this he infers a distinction between two ways of increasing total happiness: "He therefore claims that, of the two ways of increasing the sum of happiness—making people happy, and making happy people—only the first is good for people."
• Because Narveson restricts this part of morality to what is good or bad for people, he concludes that the second way—creating additional happy people—is "morally neutral".

Source Quotes

We could appeal to The Person-affecting Restriction: This part of morality, the part concerned with human well-being, should be explained entirely in terms of what would be good or bad for those people whom our acts affect. This is the view advanced by Narveson.31 On his view, it is not good that people exist because their lives contain happiness. Rather, happiness is good because it is good for people.

We could appeal to The Person-affecting Restriction: This part of morality, the part concerned with human well-being, should be explained entirely in terms of what would be good or bad for those people whom our acts affect. This is the view advanced by Narveson.31 On his view, it is not good that people exist because their lives contain happiness. Rather, happiness is good because it is good for people. Narveson also claims that, in causing someone to exist, we cannot be benefiting this person.

Rather, happiness is good because it is good for people. Narveson also claims that, in causing someone to exist, we cannot be benefiting this person. He therefore claims that, of the two ways of increasing the sum of happiness—making people happy, and making happy people—only the first is good for people.

Narveson also claims that, in causing someone to exist, we cannot be benefiting this person. He therefore claims that, of the two ways of increasing the sum of happiness—making people happy, and making happy people—only the first is good for people. Since this part of morality only concerns what is good or bad for people, the second way of increasing happiness is, he claims, morally neutral.

He therefore claims that, of the two ways of increasing the sum of happiness—making people happy, and making happy people—only the first is good for people. Since this part of morality only concerns what is good or bad for people, the second way of increasing happiness is, he claims, morally neutral. As I argued in Chapter 16, we must reject the view that what is bad must be bad for someone.

Key Concepts

• This is the view advanced by Narveson.
• On his view, it is not good that people exist because their lives contain happiness. Rather, happiness is good because it is good for people.
• Narveson also claims that, in causing someone to exist, we cannot be benefiting this person.
• He therefore claims that, of the two ways of increasing the sum of happiness—making people happy, and making happy people—only the first is good for people.
• Since this part of morality only concerns what is good or bad for people, the second way of increasing happiness is, he claims, morally neutral.

Context

Middle of Section 134, where Parfit presents Narveson as a prominent defender of a person‑affecting restriction and spells out Narveson’s claim that creating additional happy people has no moral value.