The Sovereignty of Good (Routledge Great Minds)

is significant that the idea of goodness (and of virtue) has been largely superseded in Western moral philosophy by the idea of rightness, supported perhaps by some conception of sincerity. This is to some extent a natural outcome of the disappearance of a permanent background to human activity: a permanent background, whether provided by God, by R

Nothing counts as an act unless it is a ‘bringing about of a recognizable change in the world’.

not vision, should supply our metaphors: ‘Touching, handling and the manipulation of things are misrepresented if we follow the analogy of vision.’

But if we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of value round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over. This does not imply

moral terms must be treated as concrete universals.

Touch and movement,

Man is not a combination of an impersonal rational thinker and a personal will.

The idea of a patient, loving regard, directed upon a person, a thing, a situation, presents the will not as unimpeded movement but as something very much more like ‘obedience’.

standard: the difficulties of understanding and imitating remain.