Narveson, J. (1973). The Monist, 57(1), 62–86.
Not read. The summary is drawn from the abstract or from what the work is standardly cited for. A reading should check it first.
Why this is here
The person-affecting rival to longtermism’s impersonal view: obligations are to people, not to the amount of good. For QUESTION-299.
Read in its place
The work cannot be read here, so the record holds it at second hand.
Narveson 2017 (NOTE-1318) is the author’s own late return to the subject. It states the 1967 point, that utilitarianism commits one to “making people happy” but not to “making happy people”, and says “something like that” ran through the 1973 paper and the 1978 one. It gives the full reference (The Monist 57(1), pp. 62–86) and the reprint in Bayles (1976). It restates the core argument the record attributes to 1973: creating a person confers nothing, because there is no one to confer it on. And it revises it: happy lives are a reason to create people, “contrary, perhaps, to what I have been (perhaps mis)understood to say”, though no one is owed them. Missing still: the 1973 text and its argument; its utilitarian framing, which the author has since dropped; whether it denied a reason or only a duty; the context of the slogan Caviola et al. quote from p. 80; its treatment of the procreation asymmetry; and anything it said on population policy or average against total views.