Goodness and Advice
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by Judith Jarvis Thomson,
Edited by Amy Gutmann
Princeton University Press
Due/Published
March 2003, 208 pages,
paper
ISBN
0691114730
New in paper (S03)
With commentary by Philip Fisher, Martha C. Nussbaum, J. B. Schneewind, and Barbara Herrnstein Smith Thomson explores how we should go about answering such fundamental questions as "How should we live? What do we owe to other people? " In doing so, she advances moral philosophy, pointing to some deep problems for influential moral theories and describing the structure of a new 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 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 lecuture series at Princeton, includes comments by four other scholars--Martha Nussbaum, Jerome Schneewind, Philip Fisher, and Barbara Herrnstein Smith--as well as replies by Thomson to those comments. Contents INTRODUCTION Amy Gutmann
GOODNESS AND ADVICE
Judith Jarvis Thomson
Part One: Goodness
Part Two: Advice COMMENTS
Philip Fisher
Martha C. Nussbaum
F. B. Schneewind
Barbara Herrnstein Smith REPLY TO COMMENTATORS
Judith Jarvis Thomson CONTRIBUTORS
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