Abstract: The standard view of demandingness understands demandingness in terms of costs. The paper discusses whether we should follow new suggestions to give up the standard view and think of demandingness in terms of difficulty or restrictions of options. First, I will defend the standard view by arguing that difficulty can increase demandingness, but only insofar as it leads to further costs. Second, I will try to explain the demandingness of confinement in terms of costliness, because confinement is bad for agents not only by prohibiting actions that the agent wants to perform for prudential reasons but also by limiting the development of future preferences or projects and also by making the society less open.
