How Can Godless Reason Deal with Ethical Theory?
[W]hy should we believe that it is our flourishing [and all it implies about treating others justly] rather than our bare survival that serves as our natural end and so constitutes our self-interest?... [O]n an Aristotelian conception of rationality, one may legitimately take the fact that a goal of flourishing coheres better than a goal of bare survival with our other moral beliefs as a sufficient (though defeasible) justification for believing that flourishing rather than bare survival is our natural end.... [Philosophers such as J. L. Mackie and Ayn Rand] would no doubt object strenuously to the idea of using premises about value to derive conclusions about human nature. But for the Aristotelian, once gain, the growth of knowledge is not a matter of rigid hierarchies but of networks of mutual adjustment, and no privileged class of beliefs holds absolute veto power over beliefs of another class. Hence, we are justified in taking the greater moral appeal of flourishing survival as a