Abstract

Anderson emphasizes the richness and diversity of the ways in which we value things, arguing that "we don't respond to what we value merely with desire or pleasure, but with love, admiration, honor, respect, affection, and awe.... Goods are plural.... They differ not only in how much we should value them, but in how we should value them". This point, which should be understood to be calling our attention not so much to the diversity of goods, but to the diversity of our responses to those goods, is central to Anderson's argument. Her strategy is to focus on the complex contexts within which valuing occurs in order to undermine the idea that valuing is a unitary, individual, and subjective phenomena based on desire or pleasure. For example, to honor someone is to value her; it is to care about her in a certain way. However, to properly honor someone "requires a social setting that upholds norms for that mode of valuation. I cannot honor someone outside a social context in which certain actions, gestures, and manners of speaking are commonly understood to express honor. Moreover, I cannot adequately express my honor for another unless others recognize my honor as appropriate". Thus it is possible to value different things in different ways only because the social norms governing the expression of appropriate attitudes of care differ. Because there are different ways of valuing goods, there is a plurality of goods.