The Good, the Right, and the Real: Is Value a Fact?

by Baggett, David; Walls, Jerry L.

• ISBN13: 9780197607138
• ISBN10: 0197607136
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2025-09-03
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The Good, the Right, and the Real: Is Value a Fact? argues for a strongly objective understanding of ethics. This book offers a cumulative case for robust moral objectivity, the combination of both prescriptivity and objectivity. It provides positive arguments to believe in morality realistically construed, from Moorean arguments to indispensability arguments; from partners in guilt arguments to C. S. Lewis's arguments in The Abolition of Man, and more. This book outlines critiques of such moral objectivity ranging from queerness objections and moral arguments against morality to debunking objections to moral knowledge. It offers critiques of several alternative views like those of Friedrich Nietzsche, error theory, classical expressivism, constructivism, and sensibility theory. In the process of endorsing a generous empiricism and expansive conception of rationality, it delves into evidential considerations that go beyond the purely philosophical. This book argues that a supernaturalist explanation of morality realistically construed should remain on the table of living possibilities worth careful exploration.

Author Biography

David Baggett taught philosophy & served as the Director of the Center for the Foundations of Ethics at Houston Christian University before recently becoming a law student at the Missouri School of Law. He has published extensively on topics like C. S. Lewis, philosophy and popular culture, philosophical theology, philosophy of religion, American religious history, and ethics (applied, normative, and metaethics).

Jerry L. Walls received his doctorate from Notre Dame. He is professor of philosophy and scholar in residence at Houston Christian University. He has authored or edited some twenty books as well as numerous professional articles in the areas of eschatology, ethics, and philosophy of religion. He's an award-winning poet, and also author of the forthcoming work: Why I Am Not a Roman Catholic: A Friendly Ecumenical Explanation.

Table of Contents

Part I. Setting the Stage1. What Is Moral Realism?2. Nietzsche's Dynamite DefiancePart II. The Competition3. Moral Error Theory4. Expressivism5. Constructivism6. Sensibility TheoriesPart III. Salient Issues7. Evolutionary Debunking Arguments8. Does Ethical Objectivity Require God?Part IV. The Case for Moral Realism9. Moral ApologiaAppendix. Might Beauty Bolster the Moral Argument for God?