The Robust Demands of the Good: Ethics with Attachment, Virtue, and Respect
Philip Pettit
Abstract
This book argues that we human beings can enjoy a good life only insofar as we act towards one another out of attachments like love and friendship, virtues like honesty and fidelity, and the respect that enables us each to enjoy autonomy in exercising our basic liberties. The goods we put in one another’s hands by acting out of such dispositions make robust demands. I do not enjoy an attachment like your friendship just because you actually give me favour; you must provide that treatment regardless of my charm or your convenience. And as this is true for friendship and favour, so it is true fo ... More
This book argues that we human beings can enjoy a good life only insofar as we act towards one another out of attachments like love and friendship, virtues like honesty and fidelity, and the respect that enables us each to enjoy autonomy in exercising our basic liberties. The goods we put in one another’s hands by acting out of such dispositions make robust demands. I do not enjoy an attachment like your friendship just because you actually give me favour; you must provide that treatment regardless of my charm or your convenience. And as this is true for friendship and favour, so it is true for a virtue like honesty and truth-telling, and for any form of respect and non-interference. In each case my enjoyment of the good requires you to treat me well, not just actually, but robustly: that is, across ways things might be as well as ways things actually are. The book argues that making a place in ethics for the goods of attachment, virtue, and respect has serious implications for how we think people ought to behave. It means that doing good is not just a matter of performing beneficial acts; it requires performing those acts out of beneficent dispositions. And it requires those who seek to do what is right to let themselves be guided under suitable conditions by motives of attachment, virtue, and respect: they must give those dispositions a controlling role in their lives.
Keywords:
attachment,
virtue,
respect,
disposition,
robustness,
rightness,
consequentialism
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198732600 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2015 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198732600.001.0001 |
