Virtue, Dependence, and Value: Commentary on Glen Pettigrove's ‘What Virtue Adds to Value’

ABSTRACT

According to one widely accepted view, our actions and emotions ought to be proportional to the degree of value present in their objects. Against this proportionality principle, Pettigrove sketches a view according to which the value of some virtuous actions and attitudes derives from the characteristic way of being of the agent herself, and not from any other goods that agent appreciates, pursues, or promotes. Granting Pettigrove’s rejection of the proportionality principle, I raise some questions for his replacement account. I suggest that it is not just the characteristic way of being of an agent who loves and forgives virtuously that explains the goodness of their love and forgiveness, but also the role such virtues play in making possible valuable relationships that are partially constitutive of human flourishing.

KEY WORDS:

• virtue
• value
• proportionality principle
• love
• forgiveness

Notes

1 I would like to thank the editor and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this commentary.

2 Of course, this assumes we find the generous father admirable. And not all of us will. The story itself contains a counter-argument in the person of the older son, who seethes at his father’s celebration of the younger son’s return, which particularly irks him in comparison with the way the father has (or so the older son thinks) taken him for granted. Were the older son just a bit more philosophical, we can almost hear him complaining that the father’s love and forgiveness are wrong just insofar as they are so disproportionate!