Is it rational to pursue utilitarianism

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the rational foundation of utilitarianism and the moral motivation to pursue utilitarianism. To this end, the paper discusses a variety of theories including not only utilitarianism and theo- ries of rationality, but also economic theory and evolutionary theories of coop- eration. The paper shows that both the rational foundation of utilitarianism and the motivation to pursue utilitarianism are questionable. Agent-relative theories are a recent attempt to attenuate the problem of motivation for utilitarianism. This paper shows, however, that agent-relative theories are also problematic because they require suppression of evolutionary altruistic behavior.