Natural Goodness

Introduction

Foot’s last book, a short work published by Oxford University Press in 2001. She argues that moral evaluation has the same logical structure as the evaluation of living things: just as an oak with weak roots or a wolf that does not hunt with the pack is defective as a member of its species, a human being who lacks justice or courage is defective as a human being. She builds on Michael Thompson’s analysis of judgements about life forms and on Elizabeth Anscombe. Foot explicitly abandons her earlier view, set out in “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives” (1972), that moral reasons depend on our desires. The book is a main text of neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalism.

Connections

Builds on

• Nicomachean Ethicsc. 340 BCE · Aristotle

Criticizes

• The Language of Morals1952 · R. M. Hare

More works by Philippa Foot

• 1967The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect