On the Intelligibility of Bad Acts

abstract

Do desires provide reasons and intelligibility or are desires intelligible only if had for, based on, reasons? To be intelligible, must a desire or act be had or done for a reason? Many classical ethicists, joined by Joseph Raz and many others, argue that reasons are necessary for intelligibility, that intelligibility requires desiring and acting under the aspect of the good, sub specie boni. I agree with Raz, Anscombe, and others that not all desires make for intelligibility, only those with desirability characterizations that answer Anscombe’s question, ‘What’s the good of that?’ But I argue, against Raz, that such characterizations, as well as intelligible desires and acts, need not be sub specie boni. I use Foot’s neo-Aristotelian teleology to argue that Raz may be right about people who have good second natures, good desires and good acts. But he is wrong about people whose second nature is not so good. Their desires and acts may be deformations of the desires and acts of good people. This suggests a position somewhat like Raz’s: the intelligibility of bad desires and acts may be ‘borrowed’ from the good desires and acts that they are deformations of.