Works out an end-relative account of value, including moral and aesthetic value, and shows how the idea of a moderate Mean sits naturally within it.
What is it to say that a thing is good or valuable? To answer this question, The Golden Mean and the Nature of the Good engages in conversation with ancient and recent thinkers, including Aristotle, the Cynics, and Immanuel Kant. Glen Koehn rejects several widely held ideas about value, instead offering a thoroughly end-relative theory in the spirit of modern pragmatism. Koehn suggests that certain dilemmas such as whether value is subjective or objective and whether things are good instrumentally or as ends in themselves are defective and discusses some consequences for aesthetic criticism and the relativity of taste in the final chapters.
An often-overlooked case of goal-oriented goodness is the virtuous Mean, understood along roughly Aristotelian lines. This ambitious and clearly written book explores Aristotle's idea of an intermediate between deficiency and excess and argues that, suitably reinterpreted, it has an important place in contemporary moral and aesthetic debates.
Daugiau informacijos
Works out an end-relative account of value, including moral and aesthetic value, and shows how the idea of a moderate Mean sits naturally within it.
Preface
Acknowledgments
Ch. 1 Some Mistaken Views About Goodness
Ch. 2 Moral Judgments and Their Ends
Ch. 3 Final Goods
Ch. 4 Stephen Finlays End-Relational Theory of Normative Language
Ch. 5 Error Theory
Ch. 6 Aristotles Middle Way
Ch. 7 Between Naļveté and Cynicism
Ch. 8 Beauty and Other Aesthetic Values
Conclusion: Disputing About Tastes
References
About the Author
Glen Koehn is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Huron University College in London, Ontario.
