The Good in the Right: A Theory of Intuition and Intrinsic Value

This book represents the most comprehensive account to date of an important but widely contested approach to ethics--intuitionism, the view that there is a plurality of moral principles, each of which we can know directly. Robert Audi casts intuitionism in a form that provides a major alternative to the more familiar ethical perspectives (utilitarian, Kantian, and Aristotelian). He introduces intuitionism in its historical context and clarifies--and improves and defends--W. D. Ross's influential formulation. Bringing Ross out from under the shadow of G. E. Moore, he puts a reconstructed versi

This book represents the most comprehensive account to date of an important but widely contested approach to ethics--intuitionism, the view that there is a plurality of moral principles, each of which we can know directly. Robert Audi casts intuitionism in a form that provides a major alternative to the more familiar ethical perspectives (utilitarian, Kantian, and Aristotelian). He introduces intuitionism in its historical context and clarifies--and improves and defends--W.D. Ross's influential formulation. Bringing Ross out from under the shadow of G.E. Moore, he puts a reconstructed versio

1. Early twentieth-century intuitionism -- Henry Sidgwick: three kinds of ethical intuitionism -- G.E. Moore as a philosophical intuitionist -- H.A. Prichard and the reassertion of dogmatic intuitionism -- C.D. Broad and the concept of fittingness -- W.D. Ross and the theory of prima facie duty -- Intuitions, intuitionism, and reflection -- 2. Rossian intuitionism as a contemporary ethical theory -- The Rossian appeal to self-evidence -- Two types of self-evidence -- Resources and varieties of moderate intuitionism -- Disagreement, incommensurability, and the charge of dogmatism -- Intuitive moral judgment and rational action -- 3. Kantian intuitionism -- The possibility of systematizing Rossian principles -- A Kantian integration of intuitionist principles -- Kantian intuitionism as a development of Kantian ethics -- Between the middle axioms and moral decision: the multiple grounds of obligation -- 4. Rightness and goodness -- Intrinsic value and the grounding of reasons for action -- Intrinsic value and prima facie duty -- The autonomy of ethics -- Deontological constraints and agent-relative reasons -- The unity problem for intuitionist ethics -- 5. Intuitionism in normative ethics -- Five methods in normative ethical reflection -- The need for middle theorems -- Some dimensions of beneficence -- Toward a comprehensive intuitionist ethics