Williams claims Darwinism entails that there is no harmonious human nature to be fulfilled. He then addresses Bernard Williams's objection that Darwinian evolution undermines the species-based teleology presupposed by Aristotle. Biological facts alone are insufficient to ground virtue ethics without such interpretive contexts. In chapter 4, McPherson argues that neo-Aristotelian ethics needs to use larger narratives about how our lives fit into the grand scheme of things as context to identify life's meaning. This close relationship between the subjectively valued and the objectively valuable is an ideal feature in a moral theory since humans should not be estranged from themselves and expected to act from an inhuman, detached, third-personal viewpoint. Therefore, the virtuous person does not egoistically use others for the sake of virtue and his own happiness. Since the goods regarded by virtue are intrinsically valuable, they are not merely instrumentally useful. Whatever the truly virtuous person experiences as valuable will also be objectively, intrinsically valuable. Thus, the meaningful, virtuous life is simultaneously a life of other-centered concern. McPherson's answer is that there is nothing egoistic in finding life's meaning in a virtuous life responding to that which is objectively valuable, including the intrinsic value of others. If virtue is tied too closely to the virtuous person's happiness, pursuing virtue looks egoistic. A meaningful life is a happy life, even if things go badly in other ways as it does for virtuous martyrs.Ĭhapter 3 addresses an important objection to virtue ethics. To abandon the virtuous life is to abandon the meaningful life. As Aristotle himself usually appears to mean: The virtuous life is itself the happy life rather than merely a good bet for happiness. One benefit of this account is that it entails that the virtuous life is not merely a good bet for happiness. In contrast, neither a hedonistically pleasure-filled life nor a life of amusement is necessary for a genuinely happy life. McPherson responds by reconstruing human happiness as largely consisting in a meaningful life. In contrast, within weak goods like wealth, sensual pleasure, comfort, and social approval, a utilitarianlike calculus may be appropriate.Ĭhapter 2 argues that ethics has mistakenly made human happiness rather than life's meaning the central moral issue. He finds precedent for his account of strong goods in Anscombe's account of goods possessing 'supra-utilitarian' value. A wise person would not trade strong goods for any quantity of lesser goods.

The strong goods like meaning and virtue are the central goods of human life and entail strong normative obligations. McPherson postulates a dichotomy of goods in human life: strong goods versus weak goods. He uses quasi-scientific claims about human flourishing to ground the virtues, especially the claim that humans are meaning-seeking animals. Accordingly, there are actions that humans morally ought to perform in light of life's meaning. For McPherson humans are not merely Aristotle's rational animals, or Alasdair MacIntyre's dependent rational animals, but also meaning-seeking animals.Ĭhapter 1 begins by analyzing the contemporary virtue ethics movement beginning with Anscombe's 'Modern Moral Philosophy.' McPherson seeks to recover Anscombe's rejected moral sense of ought by arguing that humans are meaning-seeking animals. Echoing an opinion found in important corners of psychology, he argues that the search for meaningfulness in life is the central human endeavor. McPherson is motivated by dissatisfaction with the sterile third-person perspective shaping recent discussions of virtue.

Virtue and Meaning is the latest book developing the neo-Aristotelian approach to virtue ethics.

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