Anti-Climacus

TO DARA: But the argument, I think, as it began with David, was not based on how individuals ought to evaluate how they act in a given situation (where your utilitarian model is not terribly different in effect (though vastly different in causes considered) from the one I'd advance). The question is how we are supposed to evaluate the actions of others. In this respect, I'm not sure you differ with me at all: there has to be some sort of slate of moral and immoral actions (not in actuality of course, strictly theoretical) that we can use to make some sort of value judgment. If there does not exist some set standard, it is hard to see how we can have any judgments about morality at all (which would have disasterous effects with, to use a couple of loaded examples, Nazis and Stalinists), or, failing that, it is hard to see why those moral judgments should carry any weight over and above the very little that can be ascribed to an individual's opinion.
For a sense of how non-moral realist schemes are counterintuitive, at least in obvious cases, the following thought-justification: explain why the Holocaust was bad without recourse to any universalizable moral law (e.g., "killing people is wrong"). I can see how it might be attempted on utilitarian grounds, but I'm not sure it can close the gap entirely. However, as Socrates says in the Protagoras, of all men, I'd be most happy to be proven wrong.