1 forthcoming in The Philosophers’ Magazine – please cite only with permission Evil Achievements Gwen Bradford Achievements play a central role in our lives. Indeed, many people would say that a life of simple comfort wouldn’t be as good as a life with accomplishment – and those accomplishments are worth the effort even at the expense of some comfort, even a large sacrifice. Achievements, it is reasonable to say, are valuable, and enrich the lives of achievers. But just what is an achievement? Consider the range, from the world- changing to the personal: the discovery of DNA; Banting and Best’s development of insulin; Wagner’s Ring Cycle; running a marathon; buying your first house; baking a soufflé without letting it fall; building a replica of the Titanic out of Lego. What, we might wonder, do all these achievements have in common, and why are they worth doing? One thought is that achievements are valuable because of what they achieve: the product. The discovery of insulin was a valuable achievement because it saved many lives; Wagner’s Ring Cycle is a great artistic achievement because it resulted in an incredible work of art that changed the genre. But not all achievements have valuable products. Running a marathon, for example, doesn’t result in anything apart from its own completion. Indeed, all you get when you run a marathon is 26.2 miles away from where you started. Many people get health benefits from the experience, but it seems that running a marathon is valuable even apart from these