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T. M. Scanlon

Analytic · North America · born 1940

American philosopher who holds that an act is wrong if it breaks rules that no one could reasonably refuse.

What it is

T. M. Scanlon is an American philosopher of ethics and political philosophy. He studied at Princeton, spent a year at Oxford and took his doctorate at Harvard. He taught at Princeton from 1966 and then at Harvard from 1984, where he held the Alford chair of natural religion, moral philosophy and civil polity.

He is best known for a version of contractualism, set out in his book What We Owe to Each Other (1998), which says that what makes an act wrong is that it breaks principles no one could reasonably reject.

The main ideas

  • The test of wrongness. An act is wrong if it would be disallowed by any set of principles for the general regulation of behaviour that no one could reasonably reject as a basis for general agreement.
  • Reasonable rejection. His test turns on what people could not reasonably reject when others are treated in accordance with principles.
  • What we owe to each other. His theory is about the part of morality that concerns how we must treat other people as rational creatures.
  • Mutual recognition. The force of right and wrong, in his view, comes from the value of a way of living with others in which each person's ability to weigh reasons is acknowledged.
  • Kant and Rawls. His version of contractualism is developed in the line of John Rawls, Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
  • Wider interests. He has also written on freedom of speech, equality, tolerance, justice and welfare.

What it looks like in practice

Imagine a neighbour who proposes a rule for a shared building: noisy repairs may be done at any hour. Scanlon would not ask how many residents would vote for it. He would ask whether someone could reasonably object to it, for example a person who works nights and needs to sleep by day, and whether a different rule would be one nobody could fairly refuse. This is an illustration of his line of questioning, not a passage from his writing.

Books and moments

  • What We Owe to Each Other (1998) sets out his contractualism.
  • The Difficulty of Tolerance (2003) collects papers on political theory.
  • His essays on equality, freedom of speech and justice appeared in journals and collections over many years.

Questions and criticism

  • What counts as reasonable? The test turns on what could be reasonably rejected. It is fair to ask who decides that, and whether the idea is circular.
  • Who is covered? His theory deals with what we owe to one another as rational creatures. Whether it can say enough about animals and future people is a question the theory faces.
  • How does it compare with utilitarianism? His view is a rival to the idea that right action is whatever does the most good. Which of the two better matches our moral judgments is left open here.

Close neighbours

The pages on John Rawls and Immanuel Kant cover the thinkers whose line he follows, the page on Christine Korsgaard sets another Kantian account of moral reasons beside his, and the page on Jeremy Bentham covers the utilitarian view he stands against.

Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 29 October 2026. The sources are listed below.

Who they connect to

Influenced by

  • Immanuel Kant · His view that morality rests on mutual justification echoes Kant.
  • John Rawls · He took up Rawls's idea of principles that free and equal people could agree to.

Other Analytic thinkers

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