Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Morality and the Good Person
I am not sure that I agree with Adams' insistence that moral goodness should not tyrannize over other sorts of value in terms of what we should prize (26). I think this claim would make more sense if we were talking about value in general, but he limits this claim to persons. I think moral goodness can plausibly be said to be more important for persons than other kinds of goodness. The examples of other kinds of human goodness Adams says should not be tyrannized over include physical beauty, graceful movement, and mathematical intelligence. It might not sound that strange to say these things have value for persons. If these things are valuable for persons as persons, I would say they are valuable because some things like beauty and knowledge are part of the good for persons and thus contribute to well-being. But Adams does not seem to be talking about goods for persons, but instead what makes a good person. I would not say that a person is a good person because her well-being is high. Whereas a painting can be good as a painting because it is beautiful, I do not think a person is good as a person because she is beautiful. Personhood brings something new into existence which makes moral value something we should prize over other types of value like aesthetic value. At the same time, I agree with Adams that moral virtue does not make you "worth more" in terms of elevating your moral status. But suppose we were going to include desert in our theory, and it was shown to be inconsistent with changes in moral status. I think the most relevant thing to consider to determine the desert of persons would be moral goodness and not beauty or knowledge.
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It seems you are misinterpreting Adam's statement in at least one spot. The first occurrence is when Adams talks about moralism. What he really wants to claim is that things without moral value can still add value to a person’s life. This doesn’t require that moral goods aren’t worth more than other goods, which is what you seem to have inferred. He might be willing to concede that having physical beauty is not sufficient for having a life that is going well. However, he would say that if you have two people who are both virtuous in the same (and also many) ways, but one of these people has more physical beauty, grace, mathematical ability, etc. than the other, the person with these additional goods has more going for him. The first person probably isn’t leading a bad life but there are ways that this person’s life could be better, and not in a moral way.
The second conflict you seem to have is how these goods are valuable to people. You have the view that they are good for a person because having them raises their well-being – that would make them an instrumental good. Let’s use Adams’ own example for excellence (24). If you were to try to obtain one of these goods and failed to do so your attempt would have less value intrinsically than if you had succeeded. This shows these goods are intrinsically good because you want the ability for the sake of having the ability, not because your well-being would be higher if you had it.
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