W. D. Ross: morality is a handful of duties, not one master rule

Ross rejected both Kantian single-rule ethics and simple utilitarian calculation, arguing we have several genuine prima facie duties — fidelity, justice, beneficence, non-maleficence and more — that can conflict with each other. None automatically outranks the rest; working out your actual duty in a given case takes judgment, not a formula. This founded twentieth-century ethical intuitionism.

— W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good — Oxford University Press, 1930
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