Introduction

pp. 1-7

in: Stephen Petro, Rationality, virtue, and liberation, Berlin, Springer, 2014

Abstract

Some of the oldest questions in the history of the world are questions of value: "Who am I?," "What should I do?," and "What kind of person should I be?" Although these questions have persisted for so long and thus seem to some endless and pointless, they are indeed still well worth asking. In the first instance, that these questions have persisted for so long merely attests to their complexity and depth. In the second instance, such a claim of pointlessness also presumes that there has been nothing we could call progress in answering these questions. Indeed, there has been much progress, and in fact there seems to be something awry with the claim that asking the question "What is the point?" (a question of value) is itself pointless or valueless. There is a function or ergon revealed within this utterance which seems in itself to elucidate and elicit value. One of the goals of this book is to explain precisely why this is the case.