Moral Worth

Abstract This chapter considers what a moral theory might say if it put the idea of a good person, understood as a case of sortal quality, at its heart. It presents John Rawls’s views on moral worth, present in both early work and later writings. It then discusses how the standards for moral worth are continuous with but also different from other cases of sortal quality. As with all cases of sortal quality, the standards of moral worth are universal. They are the same for everything that falls under the sortal. But unlike with other cases, they are in a sense unconditional and essentially self-conscious. The chapter argues that a person ought to care about their moral worth. But it questions whether there is a requirement to be a good person. It concludes by exploring the epistemology of moral worth. The leading idea is that the standards for being a good person are an object of contemplation, not discovery. Identifying the standards for being a good person cannot be empirical because identifying what it is to be a person is not an empirical matter.