Self-invention and the good.

Abstract

In the past fifteen years, ethical theory construction has come under attack from a number of directions. I aim to provide a deeper foundation for these critiques by examining recent efforts to define "good" as a part of theory construction in ethics. I argue that the reforming definitions of "good" offered by John Rawls, Richard Br and t, and most recently, Peter Railton, deprive us of the ability to raise the questions that we as human agents want to be able to raise about what to desire. More generally, determinate accounts of the good are contrary to a kind of deliberation that is essential to being a person. To be a person, I contend, is to be an inventor of possible selves, a creature who engages in self-invention. Our capacity for self-invention involve deliberation that enables us to make of ourselves persons for whom different things are good. Self-invention is thus a process that involves invention of our good. Determinate accounts of the good, by fixing what is to be our good, are at odds with our capacity for self-invention. Questions about a person's good, I argue, are not separable from her questions about what sort of person to be. and decisionmaking about a person's good is an open-ended, creative process in which she simultaneously constructs her identity and her good.Ph.D.PhilosophyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162520/1/9014003.pd