Individualistic Perfectionism and Human Nature

There has been a resurgence of interest in neo-Aristotelian and neo-Stoic ethics in recent years. Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen’s new book, The Perfectionist Turn: From Metanorms to Metaethics,2 is the latest addition to this literature.3 The authors defend what they call an “ethics of responsibility,” the core idea of which is individualistic perfectionism. The four main ideas of individualistic perfectionism are as follows: 

(1) Being virtuous is good for the virtuous person, and not only for others.  

(2) Both virtue and flourishing are somehow grounded in human nature. 

(3) All our values and reasons are ultimately grounded in our own flourishing. 

(4) Although there are generic goods and virtues that all flourishing human beings must have, the weight of these goods and virtues in each person’s life depends on the individual’s nature and her circumstances. This is the individualistic element of their theory.

These claims are familiar to readers of ancient ethics and contemporary neo-Aristotelian and neo-Stoic work; what’s new and interesting are the arguments that Den Uyl and Rasmussen offer for them. In emphasizing the individualized nature of flourishing, the authors successfully meet a challenge from subjectivists who think that an objective account of flourishing must ignore the individual’s own nature and interests.4 Although they are not the first to argue that flourishing is individualized, I think they do an exceptionally good job of explicating and defending the claim, so my discussion of it will be brief.5 I will focus on their arguments for the relationship of flourishing to virtue and the relationship of both to human nature, and on their claim that all of our values and reasons are ultimately grounded in personal flourishing.  

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