Von Wright’s Varieties of Goodness is constituted by his second set of Gifford lectures, in 1960, entitled ‘Values’, which was the second section of his two-part project, ‘Norms and Values, an Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Morals and Legislation’. He suggests that a full appreciation of the varieties of goodness is essential to attaining a correct philosophical grasp of morality. Thus, he regards his study as a groundwork to a study of ethics, rather than itself a work of ethics. In conducting his survey of the ‘varieties of goodness’, von Wright intends to give a more or less comprehensive account of the different uses of the term ‘good’.
The Varieties of Goodness
1958 to 1960
University of St. Andrews