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Notes
See Peter Railton, "Moral Realism," The Philosophical Review 95, no. 2 (1986): 330; Connie S. Rosati, "Objectivism and Relational Good," Social Philosophy and Policy 25, no. 1 (2008).
Some philosophers (most notably G. E. Moore) reject talk of “good for” altogether. I will not investigate arguments for this position within this paper.
Connie S. Rosati, "Relational Good and the Multiplicity Problem," Philosophical Issues 19, no. 1 (2009): 206.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Take, for example, the theory offered by L.W. Sumner. If well-being is necessarily perspectival (as a conceptual matter), then it is hard to see how “good for” in the welfare context can have the same meaning as “good for” when applying it to something without a perspective—for example, a car or a project. See L. W. Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). Likewise, Peter Railton appears to argue that relational goodness (of the sort he’s interested in) can only apply to beings with the capacity for motivation—clearly, this good-for relation is inapplicable to plants, cars, and other things that have no motivation. See Peter Railton, "Facts and Values," in Facts, Values and Norms (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 48.
Take, for example, the theory offered by Richard Kraut. If well-being is derived from a different kind of relational goodness, conceptually distinct from other good-for relations, then why should we assume that there must be some analogy between, say, what is good for humans and what is good for plants? Richard Kraut, What Is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-Being (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 4.
Guy Fletcher, "The Locative Analysis of Good for Formulated and Defended," Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy (2011): 10.
Kraut, What Is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-Being, 94.
I say “something like,” because Aquinas’ approach relies on analogous predication, which permits a certain amount of variation of meaning in the same linguistic expression, but not so much that two analogous predications are equivocal.
Kraut, What Is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-Being, 132.
Rosati, "Relational Good and the Multiplicity Problem," 212. Rosati points to the following passages in What is Good and Why. First, Kraut says on page 1: “When followed by the preposition ‘for’ or ‘of,’ [the word ‘good’] purports to tell us where our interests lie.” On page 87, Kraut claims that the “‘for’ in ‘G is good for S’ is best taken to indicate that G has a certain kind of suitability to S . . . . ‘suitable for’ is the sense of ‘good for’ in which boots are good for walking, spoons are good for stirring, watches are good for telling time.” Finally, on page 141, Kraut argues that “when it is good for S that P, that is because the occurrence of P is productive or part of flourishing.” Kraut, What Is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-Being.
Rosati, "Relational Good and the Multiplicity Problem," 212.
Ibid., 206. Rosati provides here analysis of each purportedly distinct good-for relation. As I will later argue, a singular analysis can accommodate all of these.
Kraut, What Is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-Being, 132-33.
Ibid., 5.
Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 44.
Rosati, "Relational Good and the Multiplicity Problem," 217.
Ibid.
Kraut, What Is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-Being, 132.
Ibid.
Rosati, "Relational Good and the Multiplicity Problem," 219-20.
Jeff Behrends, "A New Argument for the Multiplicity of the Good-for Relation," The Journal of Value Inquiry 45, no. 2 (2011): 125.
Ibid., 127.
Ibid., 126.
Fletcher, "The Locative Analysis of Good for Formulated and Defended," 11.
I will later show why Fletcher’s characterization needn’t lead us to these Aristotelian consequences.
Fletcher, "The Locative Analysis of Good for Formulated and Defended," 11.
Ibid., 12.
Aristotle famously linked a thing’s goodness to the performance of its function; the Thomistic approach I take here is similar, but does not explicitly rely on now-loaded terms like “function.” Peter Geach made a similar move in his “Good and Evil,” which avoids relying on talk of “function” and instead focuses on the nature of the thing described as “good.” P. T. Geach, "Good and Evil," Analysis 17, no. 2 (1956).
See Plato, "Philebus," in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 1997).
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New Advent, 1920), I Q1, art. 6.
David Oderberg, "Being and Goodness," American Philosophical Quarterly 51, no. 4 (2014): 345.
Ibid., 346.
Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, ed. C. I. Litzinger (Chicago: Regnery, 1964), I.L1.11.
Questiones Disputatae De Veritate, ed. Joseph Kenny, trans. Robert W. Schmidt (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1954), Q.22 a.1.
Ibid.
Summa Theologica, I Q5, art. 5.
Ibid., I Q5, art. 3.
Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, ed. Joseph Kenny, trans. Richard J. Blackwell, Richard J. Spath, and W. Edmund Thirlkel (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), II. Lectio 12, ¶ 250. At least, not for the things whose final causes they are. Aquinas does, occasionally, argue that the existence of final causes points to the existence of a divine intelligence—but whether or not he is correct is irrelevant to the current point.
Anthony J. Lisska, Aquinas's Theory of Natural Law : An Analytic Reconstruction (New York: Clarendon Press, 1996), 103.
I should note that this is not a definition of the “good-for” predicate. This would involve defining goodness, which is a task I do not wish to undertake. The analysis presented here follows the Thomistic approach: “St. Thomas, like Aristotle, did not define the good, for he saw it as a primary notion…. The good, therefore could be described only in terms of its effects.” Servais Pinckaers, The Sources of Christian Ethics (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 409. As Aquinas himself states: “Prime realities cannot be expressed by any preceding realities but only in terms of realities that succeed them, as causes are explained by their effects. Since the good moves the appetite, we describe it in terms of the appetite’s movement.” Aquinas, Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, I.L.I:C.9.
This kind of analysis, one that does not present a definition but rather a distinguishing feature, is not uncommon. In fact, this is precisely how Stephen Darwall’s “rational care” analysis of well-being operates. See, e.g., Stephen L. Darwall, Welfare and Rational Care (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).
This includes cases in which X is a relative end (i.e. an instrumental good), pleasure (i.e. the end as reached by the appetitive faculty), and S’s final cause (i.e. its telos, final completion, perfection).
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I Q5, art. 6.
Ibid., I Q5, art. 5.
Ibid., I-II Q1, art. 7.
Ibid., I-II Q18, art. 2, art. 4.
Summa Contra Gentiles, trans. Vernon J. Bourke, vol. III (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1956), ch. 3-4.
Summa Theologica, I Q5, art. 6.
Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, I.L5.
Ibid., I.L.VII.C.96. For a contemporary analytic treatment of this “ontology of value,” see Oderberg, "Being and Goodness."
See, e.g. Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, II.L4.173.
Rosati mentions great works of art, but I see no reason why we should not also include living things like humans in this category as well, supposing that human life is intrinsically valuable.
Oderberg, "Being and Goodness."
Rosati, "Relational Good and the Multiplicity Problem," 223.
Geach makes a similar point about a “good burglar.” Geach, "Good and Evil," 37.
See note 22.
Behrends, "A New Argument for the Multiplicity of the Good-for Relation," 128.
Rosati, "Relational Good and the Multiplicity Problem," 218.
Ibid., 217, 27.
John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 93. This, of course, does not exclude the possibility that our will or rationality might be distorted and make errors in judgment or action in our postlapsarian condition.
Foot, Natural Goodness, 39.
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Hayes, M. The Singular Analysis of the “Good For” Relation. J Value Inquiry 57, 257–275 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-021-09824-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-021-09824-y