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    Philippa Foot’s ‘Natural Goodness’


    Gorevan, Patrick (2009) Philippa Foot’s ‘Natural Goodness’. Maynooth Philosophical Papers, Issue 5 (2008). pp. 9-15.

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    Abstract

    Philippa Foot, with the help of her friend and colleague Elizabeth Anscombe, discovered that Summa Theologiae, II-II of Thomas Aquinas was a powerful resource in seeking objectivism in ethics. Foot’s aim was to produce an ethics of natural goodness, in which moral evil, for example, came to be seen as a ‘natural defect’ rather than the expression of a taste or preference. This brought her to develop a concrete ethics of virtue with a broad sweep, dealing with the individual and communal needs and goods of human beings, and particularly with their central moral quality of acting for a reason, with a practical rationality. This has helped her to return to an Aristotelian meaning of virtue, as simply one kind of excellence among others.

    Item Type: Article
    Academic Unit: Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > Philosophy
    Item ID: 1553
    Depositing User: Dr Cyril McDonnell
    Date Deposited: 29 Sep 2009 12:16
    Journal or Publication Title: Maynooth Philosophical Papers
    Publisher: Department of Philosophy
    Refereed: Yes
    URI:
      Use Licence: This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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