Good, Period

Abstract

Judith Jarvis Thomson is one of the very best philosophers currently active, and if we extend the comparison class to philosophers living and dead, she still ranks very near the top. So it should come as no surprise to find that her recent book Normativity is brilliant philosophical work (Thomson 2008). Philosophical brilliance can coexist with pervasive error. That’s the case here. The arguments of the book range widely, and the reader who follows along behind Thomson’s fast-moving thoughts will be rewarded with insights on many topics. In this review essay, I shall for the most part confine myself to a few arguments that appear early in the book. Versions of these arguments appear in prior writings by Thomson, which suggests that she has considerable confidence in them.1 I shall try to show any such confidence would be misplaced. Thomson’s starting point is the rejection of some assertions made by G. E. Moore in the first chapter of his Principia Ethica. Moore made many strange, fascinating and surely false claims in this chapter, but Thomson focuses on a central assertion she takes to be crucial for ethics and, once seen for what it is, obviously false.