Abstract
Many basic goods theories hold the following two claims. First, the foundation of human action is in the practical grasp that all genuine agents have of the basic human goods, that is, in their grasp of basic opportunities for human flourishing.1 Different goods theories give somewhat different accounts of what these basic goods are, but the lists generally include human life and health, knowledge, excellence at work and play, friendship, integrity and practical reasonableness. The claim is thus that in some sense or other all agents have an awareness of these goods as to be pursued; such knowledge is not merely for the few, but is part and parcel of ordinary human agency.
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Notes
Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. One: Christian Moral Principles (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983): 197.
Ibid: 184.
Bernard Williams, ‘Internal and External Reasons’, in his Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981): 101–2.
John McDowell, ‘Might There Be External Reasons?’, in J.E.J. Altham and R. Harrison (eds), Mind, World, and Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 19951: 68–85: auotation at 74.
Elijah Millgram, ‘Williams’ Argument Against External Reasons’, Nous 30 (1996): 197–220.
Ibid: 211.
Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977): 90.
See, for example, John Dewey, ‘Theory of Valuation’, in Jo Ann Boydston (ed.), The Later Works, 1925–1953 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988): 3–90. See also Henry S. Richardson’s criticism of Dewey’s views on this matter in Richardson, Practical Reasoning about Final Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994): 159–65.
See Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984): ch. 14.
See note 6.
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
Joseph Boyle, ‘Reasons for Action: Evaluative Cognitions that Underlie Motivations’, The American Journal of Jurisprudence 46 (2001): 177–97, at 191.
Timothy Chappell, Understanding Human Goods (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1998): 7.
See John Rawls, A Theory ofJustice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974).
John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980).
See Christopher Tollefsen, ‘Sidgwickian Objectivity and Ordinary Morality’, Journal of Value Inquiry 33 (1997): 57–70.
See, for example, Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York: Free Press, 1971); Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); and Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1981).
For example, see the different interpretations of Aquinas’s first principle of practical reason in the work of Grisez, ‘The First Principle of Practical Reason: A Commentary on the Summa Theologiae, 1–2, Question 94, Article 2’, Natural Law Forum 10 (1965): 168–201; and in Chappell, Understanding Human Goods: ch. 3.
Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (Indiana: Hackett Press, 1981).
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: MacMillan, 1985).
See, for example, John McDowell, ‘Values as Secondary Qualities’, in Ted Honderich (ed.), Morality and Objectivity (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985).
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© 2004 Christopher Tollefsen
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Tollefsen, C. (2004). Basic Goods, Practical Insight, and External Reasons. In: Oderberg, D.S., Chappell, T. (eds) Human Values. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524149_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524149_3
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