1 Virtues as Perfections of Human Powers: On the Metaphysics of Goodness in Aristotelian Naturalism John Hacker-Wright Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph 1. Introduction The central idea of Philippa Foot’s Natural Goodness is that moral judgments belong to same logical kind of judgments as those that attribute natural goodness and defect to plants and animals. They are all judgments of natural normativity. These judgments situate a living thing, say, a giraffe, against the background of its form of life, the giraffe. A giraffe lacking one or more of its ossicones is a defective giraffe, since, under normal circumstances for a giraffe, such a defect will impede it from living the characteristic life of its kind. On Foot’s view, moral judgments likewise situate individual human beings against the background of our kind, the human being. But moral judgments focus on a subset of human powers that play a special role in our lives as rational animals, namely, reason, will, and desire. These powers play a central role in properly human actions: those actions in which we go for something that we see as good. 1 Through a moral defect, I may be unable to go for what I see as good: for instance, through weakness of will, I may be sidetracked into doing something that I judge to be bad. These powers, when they are functioning well, are precisely my active powers to pursue the good 1 As opposed to ‘acts of a man’ which can include mindlessly scratching one’s beard or incontinent acts. See Aquinas Summa Theologiae 1a2ae, 1, 1, and John McDowell, ‘The Role of Eudaimonia’, in Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, ed. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (Berkely: University of California Press, 1981) 361.