Moral goodness and the human good

1968 ◽  
Vol 2 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 137-156
Author(s):  
Erling Skorpen
Keyword(s):  
Moral Goodness ◽  
Human Good

scholarly journals Natural Law and Goodness in Thomistic Ethics

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-96
Author(s):  
Sean Coyle
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Saint Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Moral Goodness ◽  
Law And Ethics ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Full Sense ◽  
John Finnis

The purpose of the essay is to recover a correct conception of natural law and goodness in the ethics of Saint Thomas Aquinas. It suggests that the dominant interpretation of Thomism known by legal philosophers—that of John Finnis—is importantly at variance with Aquinas’s true account. Against the dominant interpretation, a true account of natural law must (i) differentiate between natural law and ethics in the full sense (moral theology), and (ii) interpret references to human good as references to virtuous goodness rather than non-moral goodness. The main body of the essay explores the place of these concepts in Aquinas’s account of ethics.

Are People More Important than the Other Animals?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. Korsgaard
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Good For ◽  
Ultimate Purpose

This chapter criticizes the familiar idea that humans are more important than animals. After examining some reasons why we treat humans and animals differently, and showing that they do not imply the superior importance of humans, it argues that the claim of superior human importance is not so much false as (nearly) incoherent. Importance and goodness are “tethered” values: things are only important or good when they are important-to or good-for some creature. To be important or good absolutely is to be important-to or good-for all creatures. One kind of creature could be absolutely more important than others only if the fate of that kind of creature were more important to others than their own fates. Only a teleological picture of the world that made human good the ultimate purpose of the world could support the conclusion that humans are more important than the other animals.

Some Ancient Greek and Twentieth-Century Theories of Value

2020 ◽  
Vol 97 (3) ◽  
pp. 374-385
Author(s):  
Richard Kraut
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Good For ◽  
Definition Of

Abstract Plato puts goodness at the center of all practical thinking but offers no definition of it and implies that philosophy must find one. Aristotle demurs, arguing that there is no such thing as universal goodness. What we need, instead, is an understanding of the human good. Plato and Aristotle are alike in the attention they give to the category of the beneficial, and they agree that since some things are beneficial only as means, there must be others that are non-derivatively beneficial. When G. E. Moore proposed in the early twentieth century that goodness is, as Plato had said, the foundation of ethics, he rejected not only the assumption that goodness needs a definition, but also that goodness is beneficial – that is, good for someone. This article traces the development of this debate as it plays out in the writings of Prichard, Ross, Geach, Thomson, and Scanlon.

scholarly journals God and the Playpen: On the Feasibility of Morally Better Worlds

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 266
Author(s):  
Cheryl K. Chen
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Actual World ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Moral Goodness ◽  
Divine Intervention ◽  
Horrendous Evil ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Free Will Defense ◽  
Better Than

According to the free will defense, God cannot create a world with free creatures, and hence a world with moral goodness, without allowing for the possibility of evil. David Lewis points out that any free will defense must address the “playpen problem”: why didn’t God allow creatures the freedom required for moral goodness, while intervening to ensure that all evil-doing is victimless? More recently, James Sterba has revived the playpen problem by arguing that an omnipotent and benevolent God would have intervened to prevent significant and especially horrendous evil. I argue that it is possible, at least, that such divine intervention would have backfired, and that any attempt to create a world that is morally better than this one would have resulted in a world that is morally worse. I conclude that the atheologian should instead attack the free will defense at its roots: either by denying that the predetermination of our actions is incompatible with our freely per-forming them, or by denying that the actual world—a world with both moral good and evil—is more valuable than a world without any freedom at all.

Moral goodness, esteem, and acting from duty

1991 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noah M. Lemos
Keyword(s):  
Moral Goodness ◽  
Acting From Duty

Legalism and Humankind

1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-208
Author(s):  
Frank I. Michelman
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Theories ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Good For ◽  
Normative Argument

Prescriptive political and moral theories contain ideas about what human beings are like and about what, correspondingly, is good for them. Conceptions of human “nature” and corresponding human good enter into normative argument by way of support and justification. Of course, it is logically open for the ratiocinative traffic to run the other way. Strongly held convictions about the rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, of certain social institutions or practices may help condition and shape one's responses to one or another set of propositions about what people are like and what, in consequence, they have reason to value.

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