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 | | What Is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-Being by Richard Kraut ISBN-10: 9780674024410 ISBN-10: 0-674-02441-9 ISBN-13: 9780674024410 ISBN-13: 978-0-674-02441-0 Hardcover 2007-04-30 Harvard University Press Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description What is good? How can we know, and how important is it? In this book Richard Kraut, one of our most respected analytical philosophers, reorients these questions around the notion of what causes human beings to flourish--that is, what is good for us. Observing that we can sensibly talk about what is good for plants and animals no less than what is good for people, Kraut advocates a general principle that applies to the entire world of living things: what is good for complex organisms consists in the maturation and exercise of their natural powers. Drawing on the insights of ancient Greek philosophy, Kraut develops this thought into a good-centered moral philosophy, an "ethics of well-being" that requires all of our efforts to do some good. Even what is good of a kind--good poems no less than good people--must be good for someone. Pleasure plays a key role in this idea of flourishing life, but Kraut opposes the current philosophical orthodoxy of well-being, which views a person's welfare as a construct of rational desires or plans, actual or ideal. The practical upshot of Kraut's theory is that many common human pursuits--for riches, fame, domination--are in themselves worthless, while some of the familiar virtues--justice, honesty, and autonomy--are good for every human being. (20070901) | ||
Reviews | ||
The Aristotlean approach to Ethics Until the last few decades, moral discourse has been dominated by consequentialism and Kantianism. Philosophers,for a while, seemed to have forgotten that there was a third option, virtue ethics, that also deserves exploration. Kraut's book doesn't deal a lot with virtues directly, but it does lay the groundwork for an Aristotlean approach to goodness. The book does an excellent job of arguing that we should dispense with the intransitive use of the word "good" and instead recognise that statements like "X is good" are short for "X is good for P." The arguments for this position make the book worth reading. Kraut argues that what is good for humans is not merely pleasure, as a utilitarian would hold, but flourishing, fulfilling our life potential as human beings. Unfortunately, Kraut can't seem to pin it down any more than that. He defines flourishing in several different ways including "a maturation of powers as a living thing of a certain type." Kraut recognises that there is a problem here--certain human capacities seem to be evil to fulfill--but he never can give a satisfactory answer for it and instead tries to brush it under the rug. This book is very thought provoking but it also leaves some key points up in the air. | ||