The Review of Metaphysics

Virtue and Meaning is the latest book developing the neo-Aristotelian approach to virtue ethics. McPherson is motivated by dissatisfaction with the sterile third-person perspective shaping recent discussions of virtue. Echoing an opinion found in important corners of psychology, he argues that the search for meaningfulness in life is the central human endeavor. For McPherson humans are not merely Aristotle's rational animals, or Alasdair MacIntyre's dependent rational animals, but also meaning-seeking animals.

Chapter 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. Accordingly, there are actions that humans morally ought to perform in light of life's meaning. He uses quasi-scientific claims about human flourishing to ground the virtues, especially the claim that humans are meaning-seeking animals.

McPherson postulates a dichotomy of goods in human life: strong goods versus weak goods. The strong goods like meaning and virtue are the central goods of human life and entail strong normative obligations. A wise person would not trade strong goods for any quantity of lesser goods. He finds precedent for his account of strong goods in Anscombe's account of goods possessing "supra-utilitarian" value. In contrast, within weak goods like wealth, sensual pleasure, comfort, and social approval, a utilitarianlike calculus may be appropriate.

Chapter 2 argues that ethics has mistakenly made human happiness rather than life's meaning the central moral issue. McPherson responds by reconstruing human happiness as largely consisting in a meaningful life. In contrast, neither a hedonistically pleasure-filled life nor a life of amusement is necessary for a genuinely happy life. One benefit of this account is that it entails that the virtuous life is not merely a good bet for happiness. As Aristotle himself usually appears to mean: The virtuous life is itself the happy life rather than merely a good bet for happiness. To abandon the virtuous life is to abandon the meaningful life. A meaningful life is a happy life, even if things go badly in other ways as it does for virtuous martyrs.

Chapter 3 addresses an important objection to virtue ethics. If virtue is tied too closely to the virtuous person's happiness, pursuing virtue looks egoistic. 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. Thus, the meaningful, virtuous life is simultaneously a life of other-centered concern. Whatever the truly virtuous person experiences as valuable will also be objectively, intrinsically valuable. Since the goods regarded by virtue are intrinsically valuable, they are not merely instrumentally useful. Therefore, the virtuous person does not egoistically use others for the sake of virtue and his own happiness. This close relationship between the subjectively valued and the objectively valuable is an ideal feature in a moral theory [End Page 159] since humans should not be estranged from themselves and expected to act from an inhuman, detached, third-personal viewpoint.

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. Biological facts alone are insufficient to ground virtue ethics without such interpretive contexts. He then addresses Bernard Williams's objection that Darwinian evolution undermines the species-based teleology presupposed by Aristotle. Williams claims Darwinism entails that there is no harmonious human nature to be fulfilled. Instead, we are disharmonious beings with no single, unified teleological goal through which our behavior and nature can be understood. We are—to varying degrees individually and collectively—a mess. No single form of life can reliably fulfill humanity. Accordingly, there may be no unifying narrative to life other than a struggle for survival.

Williams's conclusion, however, does not seem to follow from his premises. Temperance can benefit...