Are there things we should value because they are, quite simply, good? Richard Kraut argues that there are not. Goodness, he holds, is not a reason-giving property - in fact, there may be no such thing. It is an illusory and insidious category of practical thought.

• Contents


• Acknowledgments


• 1. Moore and the Idea of Goodness


• 2. Goodness Before and After Moore


• 3. An Argument for Absolute Goodness


• 4. Absolute Evil, Relative Goodness


• 5. Recent Skepticism about Goodness


• 6. Being Good and Being Good for Someone


• 7. Non-Instrumental Advantageousness


• 8. The Problem of Intelligibility


• 9. The Problem of Double Value


• 10. Pleasure Reconsidered


• 11. Scanlon's Buck-Passing Account of Value


• 12. Moore's Argument Against Relative Goodness


• 13. Goodness and Variability


• 14. Impersonality: an Ethical Objection to Absolute Goodness


• 15. Further Reflections on the Ethical Objection


• 16. Moore's Mistake About Unobserved Beauty


• 17. Better States of Affairs and Buck-Passing


• 18. The Enjoyment of Beauty


• 19. Is Love Absolutely Good?


• 20. Is Cruelty Absolutely Bad?


• 21. Kant on Suicide


• 22. Future Generations


• 23. Bio-Diversity


• 24. Is Equality Absolutely Good?


• 25. The Value of Persons and Other Creatures


• 26. Euthanasia


• 27. The Extinction of Humankind


• 28. The Case Against Absolute Goodness Reviewed


• 29. The Problem of Intelligibility Revisited


• 30. Attributive and Predicative Uses of "Good "


• Appendix A: Killing Persons


• Appendix B: J. David Velleman on the Value Inhering in Persons


• Appendix C: Robert Merrihew Adams on the Highest Good


• Appendix D: Thomas Hurka on the Structure of Goods


• Appendix E: Jeff McMahan on Impersonal Value


• Appendix F: Other Authors and Uses


• 1. Plato


• 2. Aristotle


• 3. John Rawls


• 4. John Broome


• Bibliography

Richard Kraut was educated at the University of Michigan and Princeton University. He has taught in the Philosophy Departments at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Northwestern University, where he is Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor in the Humanities.