Connie Rosati

We commonly talk about what is _good for_ someone or something. But the expression “good for” seems to refer to differing relations depending on the context of use. This chapter focuses on the _welfarist_ good-for relation and undertakes to defend a particular view about the structure and nature of this good-for value. After discussing the basic structure of welfarist good-for, the chapter considers and critically assesses alternative views, including Moore’s eliminativist view, the “private ownership” view Wayne Sumner attributes to Moore, and both Donald Regan’s and Guy Fletcher’s (more recent) “locative analyses.” According to the _rational fit_ theory of welfare defended herein, the welfarist good-for relation is a reason-giving relation of fit between a welfare object and a welfare subject, where a welfare subject is a valuable being.

The idea that normativity and agency are importantly connected goes back at least as far as Kant. But it has recently become associated with a view called “constitutivism.” Perhaps the best-known critique of constitutivism appears in David Enoch’s article, “Agency, Shmagency,” which is the focus of this chapter. His critique of my article, “Agency and the Open Question Argument,” is briefly addressed, explaining why, contrary to his claims, I do not therein defend a form of constitutivism. It is then explained why his “shmagency challenge” does not effectively expose the real challenge faced by those who might wish to develop constitutivist theories. Finally, the chapter considers why we should take seriously the idea that normativity and agency are importantly connected, an idea that neither Enoch’s challenge nor the challenge articulated for constitutivism here does anything to defeat. Enoch has not shown that normativity won’t come from what is constitutive of agency.

Many philosophers have been skeptical about the existence of promises to self, and in fact, self-promises appear to face a dilemma. Critics have argued that promises to self are conceptually impossible. Since the agent is both promisor and promisee, she can release herself from a self-promise at will, and so she was never really bound. Self-promises, in short, cannot be genuine because unlike our promises to others, they cannot create obligations. Even if it could be shown that self-promises are not conceptually impossible, they seem to be of little importance or effect. It seems clear why we would need and want to make promises to others, but why would we ever need or want to make promises to ourselves? This chapter attempts to address this dilemma. The chapter argues that the supposed possibility of “self-release” does not show that promises to self are impossible. Insofar as there is a real difficulty for the possibility of self-promises, it lies in making out a plausible distinction between release from a self-promise and breach of that promise. But this difficulty, The chapter suggests, can be answered. The chapter goes on to offer a preliminary defense of the importance of self-promises, arguing that their importance lies in how they may function to serve our interest in autonomy—in having effective authority over ourselves.

Of the many ideas for which Ronald Dworkin is justly famous, perhaps the most striking is his idea that the US Constitution is to be read morally. This essay seeks to honor Dworkin’s idea by sketching the beginnings of an alternative approach to reading constitutions morally. It begins by distinguishing between the idea that constitutions of a certain sort are to be read morally and Dworkin’s way of reading a constitution morally. I review some of the well-known difficulties for his approach in order to make clear how an alternative would need to do better. Finally, I sketch a moral learning approach to reading constitutions morally. I argue that concern for constitutional legitimacy, respect for the overriding authority of morality, and humility about our own limitations support an approach to interpreting a constitution that allows for moral learning to be reflected in the law.

In his book, The Solace: Finding Value in Death through Gratitude for Life, Joshua Glasgow recounts his thoughts as he tried to prepare for a conversation about death with his dying mother, whom he hoped to comfort. After rejecting certain possible sources of solace, he argues that our passing away itself has value, which it derives from the meaningfulness of our lives as a whole, and this value can provide the comfort we may seek. I raise a number of difficulties for and questions about Glasgow’s claims, ultimately concluding that even if our passing away had some value, recognizing thiswould add nothing to the solace we may derive from reflecting on the value of our lives themselves.

As persons, beings with a capacity for autonomy, we face a certain practical task in living out our lives. At any given period we find ourselves with many desires or preferences, yet we have limited resources, and so we cannot satisfy them all. Our limited resources include insufficient economic means, of course; few of us have either the funds or the material provisions to obtain or pursue all that we might like. More significantly, though, we are limited to a single life and one of finite duration. We also age, and pursuits that were possible at earlier points within a life may become impossible at later stages; we thus encounter not only an ultimate time limit but episodic limits as well. Because we must live our lives with limited resources—material and temporal—we are pressed to choose among and to order our preferences. Without some selection and ordering, few if any of them would be satisfied, and we would be unable to live lives that are recognizably good at all. Moreover, we would be unable to function well as the autonomous beings that we are. Our practical task then is to form a coherent, stable, and attractive ordering of aims—to develop a conception of our good.

The idea that normativity and agency are importantly connected goes back at least as far as Kant. But it has recently become associated with a view called “constitutivism.” Perhaps the best-known critique of constitutivism appears in David Enoch’s article, “Agency, Shmagency,” which is the focus of this chapter. His critique of my article, “Agency and the Open Question Argument,” is briefly addressed, explaining why, contrary to his claims, I do not therein defend a form of constitutivism. It is then explained why his “shmagency challenge” does not effectively expose the real challenge faced by those who might wish to develop constitutivist theories. Finally, the chapter considers why we should take seriously the idea that normativity and agency are importantly connected, an idea that neither Enoch’s challenge nor the challenge articulated for constitutivism here does anything to defeat. Enoch has not shown that normativity won’t come from what is constitutive of agency.

In this engagingly written book, Colin McGinn advances a number of related theses, most prominent among them, that moral philosophy is in need of new methodologies in order to get at neglected questions about moral character. The methodology McGinn urges involves drawing upon literature for its deep and intricate portrayals of ethical themes. This would seem a natural approach given McGinn’s substantive views about ethics. He contends that our ethical knowledge is aesthetically mediated ; he speculates that the “innateness” of ethics may be “a by-product of our innate grasp of folk psychology” which comes into play when we interpret literature; and he defends an “aesthetic theory of virtue” according to which virtue coincides with beauty of soul.

In the past fifteen years, ethical theory construction has come under attack from a number of directions. I aim to provide a deeper foundation for these critiques by examining recent efforts to define "good" as a part of theory construction in ethics. I argue that the reforming definitions of "good" offered by John Rawls, Richard Brandt, and most recently, Peter Railton, deprive us of the ability to raise the questions that we as human agents want to be able to raise about what to desire. More generally, determinate accounts of the good are contrary to a kind of deliberation that is essential to being a person. To be a person, I contend, is to be an inventor of possible selves, a creature who engages in self-invention. Our capacity for self-invention involve deliberation that enables us to make of ourselves persons for whom different things are good. Self-invention is thus a process that involves invention of our good. Determinate accounts of the good, by fixing what is to be our good, are at odds with our capacity for self-invention. Questions about a person's good, I argue, are not separable from her questions about what sort of person to be. And decisionmaking about a person's good is an open-ended, creative process in which she simultaneously constructs her identity and her good

In his critique of egoism as a doctrine of ends, G. E. Moore famously challenges the idea that something can be someone. Donald Regan has recently revived and developed the Moorean challenge, making explicit its implications for the very idea of individual welfare. If the Moorean is right, there is no distinct, normative property good for, and so no plausible objectivism about ethics could be welfarist. In this essay, I undertake to address the Moorean challenge, clarifying our theoretical alternatives so that we may better decide what to admit into our moral ontology and better assess what may be at stake in whether objectivists treat good or good for (or neither) as fundamental. I compare the Moorean and welfarist pictures of value, providing an account of the form and function of good for. According to this account expresses a distinct relational value that has its source in the value of persons. Good for value is thus a form of extrinsic value that provides agent-neutral reasons for action, and it plays a pervasive normative role in regulating child rearing, guiding individual life choices, and shaping social policy formation