Suffering and Moral Responsibility [Book Review]

Mayerfeld’s aim in this work is to defend “the claim that we are subject to a prima facie duty to relieve suffering” and to clarify “the content of that duty”. In his analysis, Mayerfeld takes suffering in a psychological sense, that is, in the sense of how it feels to individuals. He denies the hedonistic utilitarian’s claim that only happiness and suffering are relevant to wellbeing or, for that matter, to morality. Nevertheless, Mayerfeld embraces a hedonistic conception of happiness and suffering, identifying these experiences with “overall states of feeling at a particular moment”.