Fit for an End

To my mind, a central insight of Stephen Finlay’s remarkable book Confusion of Tongues lies in his rejection of two opposing extremes in the theory of value. The first mistake he avoids is thinking that goodness is some property, entirely independent of interests and belonging to particular goods, which is asserted to obtain when something is favourably evaluated. According to a theory like Finlay’s, value is not in fact a simple, irreducible property shared by all and only good things. We cannot tell just by examining a thing itself whether or not it has value, regardless of what anyone wants. There is no absolute good, no just plain valuable, or simply good, irrespective of an end.