How should we live? What do we owe to other people? In "Goodness
and Advice," the eminent philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson explores
how we should go about answering such fundamental questions. In
doing so, she makes major advances in moral philosophy, pointing to
some deep problems for influential moral theories and describing
the structure of a new and much more promising theory.
Thomson begins by lamenting the prevalence of the idea that
there is an unbridgeable gap between fact and value--that to say
something is good, for example, is not to state a fact, but to do
something more like expressing an attitude or feeling. She sets out
to challenge this view, first by assessing the apparently powerful
claims of Consequentialism. Thomson makes the striking argument
that this familiar theory must ultimately fail because its basic
requirement--that people should act to bring about the "most
good"--is meaningless. It rests on an incoherent conception of
goodness, and supplies, not mistaken advice, but no advice at
all.
Thomson then outlines the theory that she thinks we should opt
for instead. This theory says that no acts are, simply, good: an
act can at most be good in one or another way--as, for example,
good for Smith or for Jones. What we ought to do is, most
importantly, to avoid injustice; and whether an act is unjust is a
function both of the rights of those affected, including the agent,
and of how good or bad the act is for them. The book, which
originated in the Tanner lectures that Thomson delivered at
Princeton University's Center for Human Values in 1999, includes
two chapters by Thomson ("Goodness" and "Advice"), provocative
comments by four prominent scholars--Martha Nussbaum, Jerome
Schneewind, Philip Fisher, and Barbara Herrnstein Smith--and
replies by Thomson to those comments.
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