Three Relations Between Roles and the Good

Clark, Sam (2023) Three Relations Between Roles and the Good. In: The Ethics of Social Roles :. Oxford University Press, Oxford. ISBN 9780192843562

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Abstract

What is the relation between roles and the human good? Between our construction, maintenance, and enaction of institutions, and the life which goes well for the person whose life it is? This chapter reads selected martial autobiographies to explore three relations and what they mean for the nature of the good: 1. Tools for self-shaping: roles are social technology for shaping ourselves towards good understood as fulfillment of desires which are independent of those roles. 2. Good-making practices: roles are parts of good-making practices which transform individuals by creating goods and initiating individuals into them. 3. Self-discovery: roles are a method for gaining self-knowledge. They help each of us discover her unchosen, seedlike, initially opaque self, and thereby discover her particular good, which is that self’s realization. The chapter concludes that some roles’ relation to the good is that they test and reveal the self and therefore its good.