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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 207 primitive, meaning that the state of affairs in question is claimed to have intrinsic worth or value that is not dependent on its relation to any further end or condition. So, for example, Aristotle's concept of pleasure, although not instrumental to any further end, would not have primitive value in this sense, because it depends on other conditions - most notably, virtuous action - to confer value on it. Call final ends that have value in this sense carriers of primitive value, or CPVs. Properties of CPVs can be cited in virtue of which the CPV has value. The utilitarian, for example, can point to the fact that happiness is something all human beings strive to achieve; the perfectionist can cite the fact that the final state of human perfection represents the full development and exercise of human capacities. But in neither case is this to supply some further condition or end that confers instrumental value on the ends in question. It is merely to explicate the relevant properties of these ends themselves that make them CPVs. Call these characteristics the value-conferring properties of CPVs. Now the consequentialist's claim that the final end is the CPV has varying degrees of persuasiveness, depending on the final end involved. Moral theories that posit happiness, human flourishing, or survival as their final end can adduce the claim of primitive value somewhat more plausibly, perhaps, than those that posit pleasure or aesthetic appreciation. Those that posit riches, power, or security seem to hold considerably less title to this claim. Let us suppose that the metaphysical structure of some state of affairs specifies it as either a state or an event, and more specifically as a physical or a mental state, and as an activity or action, or an occurrence. Then we can see that among these theories, the plausibility of the claim of primitive value does not depend on the final end's being a mental state rather than an activity, or a physical state rather than an event. Happiness is as plausible a candidate for a consequentialist's value-theoretic final good as is the exercise of the human capacity for self-government; survival is as good a candidate as the achievement of ultimate self-knowledge. CPVs, then, must be distinguished by their content and not by their metaphysical structures. The deontologist may answer the question of what confers worth or value on that in the theory which has value in much the same way as the consequentialist did with respect to the final good. The deontologist may begin by claiming that actions that fulfill moral duties, or fair democratic political institutions are also CPVs: They are inherently right and do not derive their worth from any further end or condition to which they are instrumental. It is nevertheless compatible with this claim for the deontologist then to go on to explain that the moral worth of fulfilling one's duties derives from its morally significant characteristics, as in Ross's theory (138), or from the fact that fulfilling one's duties expresses rational human nature, as in Kant's. Similarly, it might be argued that the morally important property of fair democratic political institutions is that these are institutions to which any © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
