 For a start, the distinction helps frame a challenge to the traditional assumption that what separates so-called consequentialists and deontologists is that the former but not the latter are committed to the idea that all reasons for action are teleological. A deontological restriction forbids a certain sort of action (e.g., stealing) even when stealing here is the only way to prevent even more stealing in the long run. Consequentialists charge that such a restriction must be irrational, on the grounds that if stealing is forbidden then it must be bad but if it is bad then surely less stealing is better than more. The deontologist can respond in one of two ways. First, they could hold that deontological restrictions correspond to non-teleological reasons. The reason not to steal, on this account, is not that stealing is bad in the sense that it should be minimized but rather simply that stealing is forbidden no matter what the consequences (this is admittedly a stark form of deontology, but there are less stern versions as well). This is indeed one way of understanding the divide between consequentialists and deontologists, but the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction, and in particular the idea of agent-relative reasons, brings to the fore an alternative conception. For arguably, we could instead understand deontological restrictions as corresponding to a species of reasons which are teleological after all so long as those reasons are agent-relative. If my reason not to steal is that I should minimize my stealing then the fact that my stealing here would prevent five other people from committing similar acts of theft does nothing to suggest that I ought to steal. To really have any chance of working, the reasons will probably need to be temporally relative as well as agent-relative. For otherwise the reason corresponding to a deontological restriction will give me reason to steal now if this is the only way to prevent me from stealing even more  later.[6]  If the reasons in play are agent-relative then perhaps the deontologist can do more to defuse the consequentialist’s charge of paradox, though other problems now arise. The deontologist now can look overly self-indulgent, so obsessed with the purity of her own soul that she will not sacrifice her integrity for the greater good (see Ridge 2001a). Another worry is that reasons which are both agent-relative and temporally relative are not really teleological after all in any interesting sense. For the only way to promote an action right now is simply by performing it. The broader and more standard conception of promoting an action by causing it simply has no foothold here, and if it did then the proposal would not correspond exactly with deontological intuitions. In spite of these worries, many philosophers have characterized the reasons corresponding to deontological restrictions as agent-relative. Indeed, the characterization of deontological restrictions as agent-relative (or agent-centered) is close to being an  orthodoxy.[7] 