Discriminate Virtue

ABSTRACT

Glen Pettigrove’s ‘What Virtue Adds to Value’ maintains that sometimes virtue is fundamental in the order of value, and that we should reject the general thesis that the value of our responses depends on their proportionality to the value of the objects toward which they are directed. He argues that this view is needed to account for the moral phenomena surrounding love, forgiveness and ambition. I object that his view is unable to explain the forms of discrimination that distinguish the good kinds of love, forgiveness and ambition from the bad ones; and that explaining this requires a version of the proportionality thesis he opposes.

KEYWORDS:

• virtue
• fitting responses
• reasons-responsiveness
• love
• forgiveness
• ambition

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A selection: Plato [Philebus, 12c6–13b5, Republic, 505c]; Aristotle [Nicomachean Ethics, 1173b20–31, 1175b24–9]; Augustine [The City of God Against the Pagans, XIV.6–7]; Aquinas [Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae.24,1, 1a2ae.59,2]; Schopenhauer [1998: 135]; Brentano [1969: 23]; Moore [1903: 207–22]; Broad [1930: 233–5]; Ross [1939: 271–89]; Ewing [1947: 163–4]; Hurka [2001: ch. 1]; Adams [2006].

2 To be fair to Pettigrove, Hurka [2001: 84] does say, ‘If x is n times as intrinsically good as y, loving x for itself any more or less than n times as intensely as y is intrinsically evil as a combination’.

3 See, e.g., von Wright [1963: 8–13], Ewing [1947: Ch 5], Nozick [1981: 429–30].