Thomson on Goodness

Abstract

Judith Jarvis Thomson has written extensively on what is usually (though she does not seem much to care for the word) known as ‘metaethics’. Notably in the Thomson half of Harman and Thomson’s 1996 Moral Knowledge and Moral Objectivity, the 1997 Journal of Philosophy paper “The Right and the Good”, and her Tanner Lectures in Goodness and Advice published in 2003.  Thomson thinks there is no such thing as being good simpliciter. There is only what she sometimes talks of as being good in a way or being good in some respect. A thing can be good at stuff, good at football or baking or whatever. This critical note analyses what is at stake in Thomson's approach.  Keywords: Metaethics, Judith Thomson, Consequentialism, Moral good