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Good, Good For, and Good Relative To: Relative and Relational in Value Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2016

Fritz-Anton Fritzson
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Abstract

This paper discusses how we are to understand claims to the effect that something is good relative to a person. It is argued that goodness relative to should not be equated with good for as the latter is a relational value notion and the former is a value theoretical notion. It is argued further that good relative to a person should be understood as good from the perspective or the point of view of the person. But this analysis of the notion ‘good relative to’ leaves open questions about the full nature of relative goodness. For that, a positive proposal about what it is for something to be good relative to a person's point of view is needed. One such proposal is put forward on which the relevant perspective is determined or fixed in terms of the pro and con attitudes of the individual person.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 91 , Issue 2 , April 2016 , pp. 255 - 267
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Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2016 

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References

1 Schroeder, Mark, ‘Teleology, Agent-Relative Value, and “Good”’, Ethics 117/2 (2007), 268–271 CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Ibid., 272–273

3 Ibid., 274

4 Eric Mack, ‘Agent-Relativity of Value, Deontic Restraints, and Self Ownership’ in R. G Frey & Christopher W. Morris, eds, Value, Welfare, and Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

5 I have discussed this at length elsewhere. See Fritz-Anton Fritzson, Value Grounded on Attitudes: Subjectivism in Value Theory (doctoral dissertation) (Lund: Media-Tryck, 2014)

6 Op. cit. note 4, 222

7 Rønnow-Rasmussen, Toni, ‘Good and Good For’, The International Encyclopedia of Ethics (2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Op. cit. note 1, 275

9 Darwall, Stephen, ‘Normativity and Projection in Hobbes's Leviathan ’, The Philosophical Review 109/3 (2000), 318 CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Ibid., 333

11 Ibid., 334

12 Rabinowicz, Wlodek & Österberg, Jan, ‘Value Based on Preferences: On Two Interpretations of Preference Utilitarianism’, Economics and Philosophy 12/1 (1996), 16 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. (Rabinowicz and Österberg take up opposing positions in this joint paper which reads like a dialogue between the two.)

13 Bykvist, Krister, ‘Utilitarian Deontologies?: On Preference Utilitarianism and Agent-Relative Value’, Theoria 62/1–2 (1996), 3 Google Scholar

14 David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 50

15 Op. cit. note 7

16 Rosati, Connie S., ‘Objectivism and Relational Good’, Social Philosophy & Policy Foundation 25/1 (2008), 317 Google Scholar

17 Ibid., 330

18 Op. cit. note 7. See also Rønnow-Rasmussen, Personal Value (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 106–107

19 G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Revised edn.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 150

20 Ibid., 170

21 Thomas Hobbes, De Homine, in Bernard Gert, (ed.) Man and Citizen (De Homine and De Cive) (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1991), 47

22 Ibid.

23 Christine M. Korsgaard, ‘The Relational Nature of the Good’ in Oxford Studies in Metaethics 8 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 4–5. Another Hobbesian monist is Richard Kraut. See his Against Absolute Goodness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)

24 Ibid., 9

25 Ibid., 21–22