Appearances of the Good: An Essay on the Nature of Practical Reason

New York: Cambridge University Press (2007)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

'We desire all and only those things we conceive to be good; we avoid what we conceive to be bad.' This slogan was once the standard view of the relationship between desire or motivation and rational evaluation. Many critics have rejected this scholastic formula as either trivial or wrong. It appears to be trivial if we just define the good as 'what we want', and wrong if we consider apparent conflicts between what we seem to want and what we seem to think is good. In Appearances of the Good, Sergio Tenenbaum argues that the old slogan is both significant and right, even in cases of apparent conflict between our desires and our evaluative judgements. Maintaining that the good is the formal end of practical inquiry in much the same way as truth is the formal end of theoretical inquiry, he provides a fully unified account of motivation and evaluation.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 86,468

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Desire, Practical Reason, and the Good.Sergio Tenenbaum (ed.) - 2010 - , US: Oxford University Press.
Sympathy for the devil.Kieran Setiya - 2010 - In Sergio Tenenbaum (ed.), Desire, Practical Reason, and the Good. Oxford University Press. pp. 82--110.
Knowing the Good and Knowing What One is Doing.Sergio Tenenbaum - 2009 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (S1):91-117.

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
87 (#167,403)

6 months
3 (#340,711)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Sergio Tenenbaum
University of Toronto, Mississauga

Citations of this work

A Perceptual Theory of Hope.Michael Milona & Katie Stockdale - 2018 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 5.
Means-end coherence, stringency, and subjective reasons.Mark Schroeder - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 143 (2):223 - 248.
Aesthetic knowledge.Keren Gorodeisky & Eric Marcus - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (8):2507-2535.
If Nothing Matters.Guy Kahane - 2017 - Noûs 51 (2):327-353.

View all 98 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references