A Framework for the Good

Kevin Kinghorn

Description

This book provides an ethical framework for understanding the good and how we can experience it in increasing measure. In Part 1, Kevin Kinghorn offers a formal analysis of the meaning of the term "good," the nature of goodness, and why we are motivated to pursue it. Setting this analysis within a larger ethical framework, Kinghorn proposes a way of understanding where noninstrumental value lies, the source of normativity, and the relationship between the good and the right. Kinghorn defends a welfarist conception of the good along with the view that mental states alone directly affect a person's well-being. He endorses a Humean account of motivation—in which desires alone motivate us, not moral beliefs—to explain the source of the normative pressure we feel to do the good and the right. Turning to the place of objectivity within ethics, he concludes that the concept of "objective wrongness" is a misguided one, although a robust account of "objective goodness" is still possible. In Part 2, Kinghorn shifts to a substantive, Christian account of what the good life consists in as well as how we can achieve it. Hume's emphasis of desire over reason is not challenged but rather endorsed as a way of understanding both the human capacity for choice and the means by which God prompts us to pursue relationships of benevolence, in which our ultimate flourishing consists.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie de la religion
• Christian Theology
• Religious
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Ethics
• Christianity
• Religion
• Hume

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268084653
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A Framework for the Good
A Framework
for the Good
Kevin Kinghorn
University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana
Copyright 2016 by the University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kinghorn, Kevin Paul, 1967- author.
A framework for the good / Kevin Kinghorn.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 9780268033309 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 0268033307 (pbk.),
Good and evil. Good and evil-Religious aspects-Christianity.
BJ1401.K56 2016
170-dc23
2015047536
ISBN 9780268084653
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper) .
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail] .
For Anna Keren
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One
Placing the Good within an Ethical Framework
ONE The Meaning of Good
1.1 Our Pro-attitude toward the Good
1.2 Flourishing and the Good
1.3 Instrumental Goodness
1.4 Noninstrumental Goodness
1.5 The Morally Good
1.6 Closing Moore s Open Question
1.7 The Place of Semantic Analysis
TWO The Nature of the Good
2.1 Hedonism
2.2 The Inadequate Alternative of Desire Satisfaction
2.3 L. W. Sumner
2.4 Nozick s Experience Machine
2.5 The Badness of Death
2.6 Is Schadenfreude a Special Problem?
THREE Motivations, the Good, and the Right
3.1 Sticking to Humean Guns
3.2 The Source of Normative Force
3.3 The Concepts Right and Wrong
3.4 Moral Facts and the Place of Objectivity
Part Two
A Christian Framework for Choosing the Good Life
FOUR Others and the Good
4.1 Perfectionism
4.2 The Mental Experience of Connecting
4.3 Are Relationships the Key to Our Well-Being?
4.4 Making Others Interests Our Own
4.5 Divine Coordination
4.6 Establishing Relationships
FIVE God, the Good, and Our Choices
5.1 The Place of Self-Interested Desires
5.2 Can We Desire Relationships?
5.3 Self-Directed Reasons for Benevolence
5.4 God s Invitation to Pursue the Good
5.5 Freedom in Choosing the Good
5.6 The Final Dichotomy of Benevolent and Self-Interested Ends
SIX Feeling Our Way toward the Good
6.1 The Positive Feeling Tones of Benevolence
6.2 Morally Significant Decisions
6.3 Feeling Tones as Our Indication of the Good
6.4 Some Theological Connections
Notes
Works Cited
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In acknowledging helpful influences on my work, I will always feel the need to mention two individuals whose personal investments in me have greatly shaped the course of my academic life. Richard Swinburne took me on as a DPhil student, a decision for which I will always be thankful. Working under his guidance was a cherished opportunity. And his writings continue to be resources to which I turn again and again.
Jerry Walls introduced me to the subject of philosophy of religion some twenty-five years ago. His ongoing support and encouragement have been enormous through the years. Without necessarily trying to do so, he has taught me many lessons about friendship and about how to nurture students. I do not see how I would possibly have become a philosopher if I had not crossed paths with Jerry.
My parents, Ken and Hilda, probably imagined that their days of helping me improve my writing would have ended when I stopped bringing homework home from school. These many years later, they re still helping; and I remain grateful to them for this, among other things.
My wife, Barbara, has given me a variety of insights into what is good-the kinds of insights possible only when one is around another person every day. I ve now written a book about goodness; she continues to live it out.
Our son, Joseph, has been a most welcome presence during the latter stages of this project. Joseph, you ve given me examples of the joys that come within relationships of benevolence, just as I was trying to write on the subject. Thank you.
To our daughter, Anna Keren, you ve more than lived up to the promise we believe we were given that you would be, in a word, good. Most of the early ideas for this book were formed as we took daily walks around University Parks. This book is dedicated to you.
Introduction
The broad goals of this book are twofold. First, the book offers an analysis of the good : the meaning of the term; the nature of goodness; and why we are motivated to pursue it. Setting this analysis within a larger ethical framework, the book also proposes a way of understanding the relationship between the good and the right. My discussion of these issues takes place in Part I of this book. I engage there with historic (and controversial) issues in moral philosophy, offering my own conclusions on such subjects as noninstrumental value and normativity.
Building on these more formal discussions of the nature of the good and our motivation to pursue it, I move in Part II to offer a substantive account of what the good life consists in-as well as how we can achieve it. This account is a decidedly Christian one, charting God s relationship to the good and to the right. While I note experiences from everyday life that, I believe, serve as cues pointing to the Christian affirmation that we are created in the image of a Trinitarian God, arguing this point is not a primary goal. Rather, I assume an orthodox, Christian understanding of God as the one who created humans in such a way that our ultimate flourishing is achieved only as our relationships mirror the loving, self-giving relationships within the Trinity. Jesus is recorded in John 10:10 as saying that he came to give us life. I want to propose an ethical framework for understanding that claim. Accordingly, Part II offers a way of understanding substantive questions about how we can achieve a good life.
Even while my ultimate concerns in Part II of this book can be described as theological, my main interlocutors throughout the book remain philosophers within the analytic tradition. For the reader whose interests are primarily theological, I would emphasize that we often gain invaluable clarity on theological matters by drawing from the penetrating ways in which moral philosophers have framed discussions on such topics as intrinsic value, normativity, action explanation, and semantic analyses of moral concepts. For the reader whose interests are primarily philosophical, I would commend Part II as an important area of exploration. Christian theism offers a very interesting, as well as historically significant, context in which to find answers to some otherwise intractable difficulties in moral philosophy. And the resources it provides can, in my experience, prove both intellectually and existentially rewarding.
I find that my fellow Christian moral philosophers are often keen to explore whether there could be an objective basis for morality if there were in fact no God. 1 I will not be addressing this question, though I hope that by the end of the book it will be clear why I find the question so ambiguous. I do want to insist that, in a theistic, ethical framework, there are certain facts about how we should live that are not dependent on anyone s point of view. However, I distance myself from the attempt to find this objective element in discussions about the rightness and wrongness of actions. As will become clear in chapter 3 , I do not believe it makes conceptual sense to suggest that some action could be objectively wrong. This conclusion is certainly one reason I have for privileging the place of the good (and not of the right) in the ethical framework I propose.
I realize that I have many allies-from Aristotle through Aquinas-in privileging the place of the good and in exploring facts about human nature that help us identify conditions for a good life. I even share with this tradition in moral philosophy the conclusion that conceptual links exist between goodness and life . And given that facts exist about how living things do and do not flourish, the door is seemingly opened for me simply to follow this tradition in making objective (i.e., perspective-independent) claims about how we should live.
However, I find problems both with the methodology and with some of the common conclusions associated with the Aristotelian tradition. If I assert that some action or thing is good, I am in some sense commending it. So, while I agree that an important conceptual link exists between goodness and life, I also note the pro-attitude we often (usually? always?) have toward the things we judge to be good. Writers in the Aristotelian tradition seem to me not to offer a clear and adequate explanation for this pro-attitude.
I think the problem is partly a methodological one. Before tackling the nature of the good (e.g., linking it with the life functions of a living thing), we must first be clear about the meaning of good . What concept is denoted by this term? And how do we humans come to understand this concept, so that we have a pro-attitude toward the things we view as good? I do not find these questions adequately answered even by the more recent moral philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition who are cognizant of G. E. Moore s emphasis on the distinction between the meaning and the nature of the good.
Aristotelians will no doubt view my methodological point as uninteresting, given their strong tendency to eschew a Humean account of action explanation. And admittedly, our pro-attitude toward things we judge to be good is fairly inconsequential if , as someone like Philippa Foot insists, there is a natural normativity associated with the life functions of living things. 2 However, I find this manoeuver-as well, more generally, as the appeal to there being reason to perform some action-unpromising as an explanation of human motivation . Having abandone