Samuel Scheffler Agent Centered Prerogative

Samuel Scheffler is a moral and political philosopher who is an University professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Law School at New York University. He is also a son of a Harvard Philosopher named Israel Scheffler. He was also a student of a distinguished philosopher Thomas Nagel.
Scheffler’s Agent-centered prerogative was used in the Agent – centered Deontological Theories. Agenr-centered Deontological says that to taxonomize deontological theories, the most traditional way is to divide them between agent-centered and victim -centered or patient -centered theories. The idea of an agent-centered prerogative is that a moral person can have a prerogative not to do the acts that produce the greatest or best consequences. This idea was first introduced to moderate the demands of
act consequentialism.
It has implications on global justice especially on the issue about fighting against world poverty. There are called agent – relative reason, agent-relative obligation and agent -related permission. All these three are connected according to the agent-centered theories. It is said that we have both permission and obligations that give us agent-relative reasons for actions. An agent-relative reason is called such because it is a reason relative to the agent whose reason it is. It need not constitute a reason for anyone else. An agent-relative obligation is an obligation for a particular agent to take or refrain from taking some action. For the reason that it is called agent-relative obligation, the obligation does not necessarily give anyone else a reason to support that action. An agent-relative permission is a permission from some agent to do some act even though others may not be permitted to aid
that agent in the doing of his permitted action. Since agent-centered theories are based on agent-relative reasons, they enjoin each of us to do or not to do certain things but also treat friends and family in certain ways because they are ours. Even if we neglect them, we could so more to others.
The idea of agency is the main point of Agent – centered theories. It is where the moral plausibility of agent – centered theories is rooted.
Since theorists sometimes do not coincide their ideas, there was a theorist that contradicted to Scheffler’s idea. It was Jonathan Benett that objected to the Scheffler’s use of the term ‘agent- centered”. He thinks that his Scheffler’s idea of “agent-centered prerogative” and “agent – centered restrictions” does not have an interesting notion of agent -centeredness that applied equally well to the 2 ideas. He said that using the term “agent-centered” was misleading because it seems that they have some interesting property in common.
In this argument, it maintains that the prerogative as Scheffler characterized is a permission to do what one wants to do even if it doesn’t produce the best results in that situation. It can be that it has the same “practical import” as permission doesn’t always promote optimal outcomes. It can also be that “thrown out” in favor of the other type and in consequence, the prerogative of Scheffler’s agent-centeredness doesn’t work.