Virtue and the Search for Intrinsic Goodness

Author(s):  
Stephen Petro
Keyword(s):  
Apeiron ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Echeñique

AbstractIn this article I argue for the thesis that Alexander's main argument, in Ethical Problems I, is an attempt to block the implication drawn by the Stoics and other ancient philosophers from the double potential of use exhibited by human life, a life that can be either well or badly lived. Alexander wants to resist the thought that this double potential of use allows the Stoics to infer that human life, in itself, or by its own nature, is neither good nor bad (what I call the Indifference Implication). Furthermore, I shall argue that Alexander's main argument establishes that human life, despite exhibiting a double potential of use, is by its own nature or intrinsically good. Finally, given that this is not a conclusion that the Stoics are likely to accept, I shall also contend that the argument should be regarded as conducted for the most part in foro interno, as a way of persuading the Peripatetics themselves of the falsity of the Indifference Implication, precisely because of the risk that such an implication be derived from their own theoretical framework.


Utilitas ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Hurka

This paper sketches an account of the intrinsic goodness of virtue and intrinsic evil of vice that can fit within a consequentialist framework. This ‘recursive account’ treats the virtues and vices as higher-level intrinsic values, ones that consist in, respectively, appropriate and inappropriate attitudes to other, lower-level values. After presenting the main general features of the account, the paper illustrates its strengths by showing how it illuminates a series of particular vices. In the course of doing so, it distinguishes between the categories of what it calls pure vices (such as malice), vices of indifference (such as callousness), and vices of disproportion (such as selfishness), and shows how each category is made vicious by a different general feature of the recursive account.


Author(s):  
William E. Mann

A Franciscan philosopher and theologian, Vital du Four was noted for denying the distinction between a thing’s essence and its existence, for expounding an Augustinian theory of perception and for emphasizing the absolute power and contingency of God’s will in creating the universe. One interpretation of his views holds that created things have no intrinsic goodness, only that which has been conferred upon them by God.


2010 ◽  
Vol 105 (4) ◽  
pp. 450-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Kraut
Keyword(s):  

Utilitas ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-270
Author(s):  
MILES TUCKER
Keyword(s):  

Moore's moral programme is increasingly unpopular. Judith Jarvis Thomson's attack has been especially influential; she says the Moorean project fails because ‘there is no such thing as goodness’. I argue that her objection does not succeed: while Thomson is correct that the kind of generic goodness she targets is incoherent, it is not, I believe, the kind of goodness central to the Principia. Still, Moore's critics will resist. Some reply that we cannot understand Moorean goodness without generic goodness. Others claim that even if Moore does not need Thomson's concept, he still requires the objectionable notion of absolute goodness. I undermine both these replies. I first show that we may dispense with generic goodness without losing Moorean intrinsic goodness. Then, I argue that though intrinsic goodness is indeed a kind of absolute goodness, the objections marshalled against the concept are unsound.


1928 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-400
Author(s):  
Edward F. Mettrick
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Josef Seifert

Kant says that moral values are ‘good without qualification.’ This assertion and similar remarks of Plato can be understood in terms of a return to moral data themselves in the following ways: 1. Moral values are objectively good and not relative to our judgments; 2. Moral goodness is intrinsic goodness grounded in the nature of acts and independent of our subjective satisfaction; 3. Moral goodness expresses in an essentially new and higher sense of the idea of value as such; 4. Moral Goodness cannot be abused like intellectual, aesthetic, temperamental and other values; 5. Moral values are good in that they never must be sacrificed for any other value, because they are incomparably higher and should absolutely and ‘first’ be sought for; 6. Moral goodness makes the person as such good; 7. All three different modes of participation in moral values are linked to the absolute, most ‘necessary’ and highest good for the person; 8. Moral Values are goods "in the unrestricted sense" by being pure perfections in the sense that "neither in this world nor outside it" can we find anything that could be called good unqualifiedly except moral goodness which is absolutely better to possess than not to possess. 9. Moral Values are unconditionally good because they are never just ‘means’ towards ends. 10. Moral values imply a new type of ought which elucidates the ‘absolute sense’ in which they are good. Conclusion: These distinctions allow a better grasp of Kant and Plato as well as of a central ethical truth decisive for the moral education of humankind.


2000 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 168-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rita C. Richardson ◽  
Katherine I. Norman

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