Why are Some Transactions Repugnant? Superseding the Utilitarian and the Deontological Explanations

Elias L. Khalil

Journal of Economic Issues, 2025, vol. 59, issue 3, 760-779

Abstract: This article starts with repugnant judgments regarding the buying-and-selling (commodification) of human kidneys, sex, and commodities that define one’s identity. It reviews two major explanations of such judgments: the deontological and the utilitarian. The deontological approach supposes some (moral) principles that cannot be reduced to substantive utility. This approach, however, faces an anomaly: why do such principles vary across space and time? To explain the variability in terms of change of substantive constraints along the utilitarian approach raises another anomaly. The utilitarian approach supposes that moral principles are ultimately commensurable with substantive preferences, that is to say, there is a single metric objective function. If so, why do people experience shame when they violate moral principles and commit repugnant transactions? Thus, we are at an impasse, caught between the variability-of-moral-principles anomaly and the shame anomaly. This article promises to solve both anomalies, that is to say, superseding the shortcomings of both the utilitarian and the deontological approaches. The proposed framework amounts to explaining the origin of judgments of some transactions as repugnant.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/00213624.2025.2533724

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