Goods and Virtues

This important and provocative book offers a critique of prevalent approaches to human good and virtue. Slote argues that some personal good and virtues are less absolute than is recognized, being either relative to times of life or possible worlds, or dependent for their value on other goods and virtues. He also criticizes certain familiar restrictions on what counts as a good or virtue, and defends the idea of contra-moral virtues and goods that do not yield reasons for action. The book demonstrates that typical philosophical accounts of the virtues and human goods oversimplify the phenomena, and that a more exact approach is needed.