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

This book argues that what we want is good, even when desires and evaluative judgements conflict.

Sergio Tenenbaum (Author)

9780521119818, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 17 September 2009

328 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.48 kg

The main ambition of Sergio Tenenbaum’s new book, Appearances of the Good, is to restore to plausibility what Tenenbaum calls the “scholastic” view of desire...In Tenenbaum’s hands, the scholastic view of desire is shown to be a pivotal element in a sweeping picture of how thought makes itself practical. Tenenbaum succeeds not only in restoring this conception to view but also in showing that it deserves more careful consideration than it ordinarily receives."
-Talbot Brewer, University of Virginia, Philosophical Review

'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.

1. The basic framework: desires as appearances
2. The basic framework: from desire to value and action
3. The subjective nature of practical reason
4. The objective nature of practical reason
5. Deontological goods
6. Motivation without evaluation? Unintelligible ends, animal behaviour, and diabolical wills
7. Evaluation and motivation part company? The problem of Akrasia
8. Evaluation and motivation part company? The problem of Accidie.

Subject Areas: Analytical philosophy & Logical Positivism [HPCF5]