Moral worth and rationality as acting on good reas

Authors: Sarah Stroud

Publish Date: 2007/02/14

Volume: 134, Issue: 3, Pages: 449-456

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Abstract

Unprincipled Virtue probably shouldn’t be called that Its main subject is moral praiseworthiness and blameworthiness not virtue1 And “unprincipled” makes it sound as if the book is a salvo in the generalist–particularist wars in moral theory which it certainly is not Rather Arpaly’s main aim in the book—in addition to pressing a methodological agenda on which I will shortly comment—is to defend a unified theory of rationality and moral worth according to which our actions are rational or morally praiseworthy when we act for good reasons—that is for what are in fact good reasons regardless of what we take to be good reasons In the moral domain “good reasons” must be understood as specifically moralreasons Rather than making the agent’s conception of what she is doing criterial for either rationality or moral praiseworthiness Arpaly proposes in both cases a more “external” criterion which focuses on the match or lack thereof between what are in fact the agent’s

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