ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines a neo-Aristotelian theory of what the good life consists in. Human beings, it can be said, have a nature best characterised using the interconnected Aristotelian notions of ergon and telos. The chapter discusses a neo-Aristotelian account of value which will be one of the two normative postulates employed in the generation of principles of distributive justice. Value, therefore, resides in the flourishing of interests or the realisation of the potential for flourishing. Thus, value resides in the sensuous movement from potentiality to actuality of our potential for flourishing; interest realisation being the process of movement of such potentialities to actuality. Thus, for example, whatever has dignity has value independently of any effects, profits or advantage which it might produce. J. Rawls makes a similar kind of point about the instrumental value of self-esteem in A Theory of Justice when he claims that it is one of the ‘primary goods’.
