The outcome-centered accounts that dominate in philosophy claim to clarify our understanding of ourselves, but they instead lead us away from what we most value. The arguments here show the distortion to our self-understanding wrought by the tyranny of outcomes, and overthrow it, allowing greater authenticity in our political and legal practices.

Paul Hurley is the Sexton Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, where he has been awarded the Huntoon and Senior Huntoon Teaching Awards. Paul has published articles in ethics and meta-ethics in Ethics, Mind, Philosophical Studies, Philosophers' Imprint, Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Analytic Philosophy, The Journal of Ethics, and The Journal of Moral Philosophy. His recent work focuses on the central debate in normative ethics between consequentialists and their critics, and upon clarifying certain deep structural problems with the framing of this debate. An earlier book length contribution to this debate, Beyond Consequentialism, was published by Oxford University Press.