Book Review: What is Good and Why
A review of What Is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-Being
What is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-Being is the first book-length contribution to contemporary ethical theory by this highly regarded scholar of ancient philosophy. With it, Richard Kraut joins recent moral philosophers who draw inspiration from ancient Greek philosophy, particularly that of Plato and Aristotle, to advance lines of thinking that challenge utilitarianism and certain forms of neo-Kantianism in ethics.[1] Kraut defends two central theses. His "developmentalism" about well-being holds that something is (non-instrumentally) good for a person just in case it is productive or part of human flourishing, i.e., productive or part of the "maturation and exercise of certain cognitive, social, affective, and physical skills" (p. 141). Kraut defends a complementary thesis in the theory of practical reason, "That there is just one legitimate route — the route of goodness — for arriving at practical conclusions" (p. 15). Aiming in this way to secure a link between his account of well-being and conclusions about how we should act, Kraut lays the foundation for a "good-centered" ethical theory that he opposes to utilitarianism, on the one hand, and Rawlsian contractualism, on the other. Against the utilitarians, Kraut objects to quantifying value along a single measure and to emphasizing maximization as the proper response to value. Against Rawls, Kraut argues not only that the case for the purported priority of the right over the good ultimately rests on a false conception of goodness but also that moral rightness, understood as introducing a category of reasons distinct from and superior to those that advert to goodness and badness, "does not exist" (p. 29).