Against Absolute Goodness

by Richard Kraut

Overview

Are there things we should value because they are, quite simply, good? If so, such things might be said to have "absolute goodness." They would be good simpliciter or full stop - not good for someone, not good of a kind, but nonetheless good (period). They might also be called "impersonal values." The reason why we ought to value such things, if there are any, would merely be the fact that they are, quite simply, good things. In the twentieth century, G. E. Moore was the great champion of absolute goodness, but he is not the only philosopher who posits the existence and importance of this property. Against these friends of absolute goodness, Richard Kraut here builds on the argument he made in What is Good and Why, demonstrating that goodness is not a reason-giving property - in fact, there may be no such thing. It is, he holds, an insidious category of practical thought, because it can be and has been used to justify what is harmful and condemn what is beneficial. Impersonal value draws us away from what is good for persons. His strategy for opposing absolute goodness is to search for domains of practical reasoning in which it might be thought to be needed, and this leads him to an examination of a wide variety of moral phenomena: pleasure, knowledge, beauty, love, cruelty, suicide, future generations, bio-diversity, killing in self-defense, and the extinction of our species. Even persons, he proposes, should not be said to have absolute value. The special importance of human life rests instead on the great advantages that such lives normally offer. "When one reads this, one sees the possibility of real philosophical progress. If Kraut is right, I'd be wrong to say that this book is good, period. Or even great, period. But I will say that, as a work of philosophy, and for those who read it, it is excellent indeed." --Russ Shafer-Landau, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190208240
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/02/2011
Series:	Oxford Moral Theory
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	653 KB

About the Author

Richard Kraut was educated at the University of Michigan and Princeton University. He has taught in the Philosophy Departments at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Northwestern University, where he is Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor in the Humanities.

Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments 1. Moore and the Idea of Goodness 2. Goodness Before and After Moore 3. An Argument for Absolute Goodness 4. Absolute Evil, Relative Goodness 5. Recent Skepticism about Goodness 6. Being Good and Being Good for Someone 7. Non-Instrumental Advantageousness 8. The Problem of Intelligibility 9. The Problem of Double Value 10. Pleasure Reconsidered 11. Scanlon's Buck-Passing Account of Value 12. Moore's Argument Against Relative Goodness 13. Goodness and Variability 14. Impersonality: an Ethical Objection to Absolute Goodness 15. Further Reflections on the Ethical Objection 16. Moore's Mistake About Unobserved Beauty 17. Better States of Affairs and Buck-Passing 18. The Enjoyment of Beauty 19. Is Love Absolutely Good? 20. Is Cruelty Absolutely Bad? 21. Kant on Suicide 22. Future Generations 23. Bio-Diversity 24. Is Equality Absolutely Good? 25. The Value of Persons and Other Creatures 26. Euthanasia 27. The Extinction of Humankind 28. The Case Against Absolute Goodness Reviewed 29. The Problem of Intelligibility Revisited 30. Attributive and Predicative Uses of “Good” Appendix A: Killing Persons Appendix B: J. David Velleman on the Value Inhering in Persons Appendix C: Robert Merrihew Adams on the Highest Good Appendix D: Thomas Hurka on the Structure of Goods Appendix E: Jeff McMahan on Impersonal Value Appendix F: Other Authors and Uses 1. Plato 2. Aristotle 3. John Rawls 4. John Broome Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

"The obligatory joke — this book is very good, but not absolutely so — has essentially been made already in a blurb on the cover. In the blurb, Russ Shafer Landau says the book is excellent, and I have to agree it is. It is also very well written. With its lucid prose — rare in a philosophy book — it can be read in one sitting."—Nomy Arpaly, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

From the Publisher