In a clear and elegant style, T. M. Scanlon reframes current philosophical debates as he explores the moral permissibility of an action. Permissibility may seem to depend on the agent's reasons for performing an action. For example, there seems to be an important moral difference between tactical bombing and a campaign by terrorists - even if the same number of noncombatants are killed - and this difference may seem to lie in the agents' respective aims. However, Scanlon argues that the apparent dependence of permissibility on the agent's reasons in such cases is merely a failure to distinguish between two kinds of moral assessment: assessment of the permissibility of an action and assessment of the way an agent decided what to do.Distinguishing between these two forms of assessment leads Scanlon to an important distinction between the permissibility of an action and its meaning: the significance for others of the agent's willingness to act in this way. An action's meaning depends on the agent's reasons for performing it in a way that its permissibility does not. Blame, he argues, is a response to the meaning of an action rather than its permissibility. This analysis leads to a novel account of the conditions of moral responsibility and to important conclusions about the ethics of blame.

托馬斯•斯坎倫（Thomas M.Scanlon，1940- ），美國著名道德哲學傢，哈佛大學自然宗教學與道德哲學奧爾福德教授，已故美國哲學大師、倫理學巨匠約翰•羅爾斯的得意門生，繼羅爾斯之後道德契約主義的 當代代錶人物；曾任哈佛大學哲學係主任、美國哲學學會東部分會主席；與托馬斯•內格爾一起創辦瞭著名哲學刊物《哲學與公共事務》（Philosophy and Public Affairs）並擔任該刊的副主編。主要代錶作有：《寬容之難》、《我們彼此負有什麼義務》。