Ethics and Political Philosophy Group Talk (Hasko von Kriegstein, Ryerson)

The Ethics and Political Philosophy Research Interest Group welcomes Hasko von Kriegstein, assistant professor in the Department of Law & Business at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University. Professor von Kriegstein’s main research interests lie in business ethics and normative ethical theory. He thinks that the most promising way of defending capitalist institutions lies in showing that they are conducive to public welfare. He works on the assumption that an ethics appropriate for business has to take seriously the institutional settings of the market and the various forms of organizations within it.

Talk Title

Perfection and Success

Talk Abstract

According to perfectionism, the best human life is constituted by the full development, or excellent exercise, of essential human capacities. This is an attractive view for those who find subjectivist theories of the good life descriptively inadequate and objective list theories insufficiently systematic. Perfectionism promises to provide a unifying explanation of why the things we typically find on lists of objective goods belong on the list. In this talk, I argue that, in addition to other well-discussed problems with the theory, perfectionism fails to deliver on this promise. Perfectionism does not provide a satisfactory account of what is good about two of the central values it is often invoked to explain: knowledge and achievement.

About the Ethics and Political Philosophy Group

The Ethics and Political Philosophy Group meets periodically throughout the year to discuss topics in value theory and related fields, including meta-ethics, normative ethics, applied ethics, social and political philosophy, philosophy of law, moral psychology, practical reason, agency, and identity.