Abstract

In Agent-Centered Morality, George W. Harris constructs a broadly Aristotelian conception of morality and argues for its superiority over Kantian conceptions. Harris approaches morality through human practical reason. He is committed to articulating a plausible account of how human beings think, value, and choose based on their conceptions of their own good. Harris’s ethics is “agent-centered” in that it takes moral obligations to be grounded in what makes life meaningful from the agent’s point of view. The ethical system that emerges from Harris’s approach rejects the impartiality, universality, and overriding rationality that Enlightenment philosophers attributed to morality.