Value Judgement

James Griffin asks how and how much we can improve our ethical standards not lift our behaviour closer to our standards but refine the standards themselves. To give an answer to this question it is necessary to answer most of the questions of ethics. So Value Judgement includes discussion of what a good life is like where the boundaries of the `natural world'' come how values relate to that world how great human capacitiesthe ones important to ethicsare and where moral norms come from. Throughout the book the question of what philosophy can contribute to ethics repeatedly arises. Philosophical traditions such as most forms of utilitarianism and deontology and virtue ethics are Griffin contends too ambitious. Ethics cannot be what philosophers in those traditions expect it to be because agents cannot be what their philosophies need them to be. This clear compelling and original account of ethics will be of interest to anyone concerned with thinking about values: not only philosophers but legal political and economic theorists as well. L