What Makes Actions Morally Good?

Abstract

When we evaluate actions from the moral point of view, we can do this in two very different ways. We can consider them as morally right or wrong, but we can also judge them morally good or bad. Even though the distinction between right and good is generally recognized by moral philosophers, there is a tendency in contemporary ethics either to oversimplify it or to blur it altogether. Most philosophers focus on motives when they investigate this problem. I will, however, show that there are also other good–making factors and moreover, I will argue that all of them are traits of the agent’s personality. To this aim, I will in Sections (I) to (III) show that the moral worth of actions depends on more than motivation or the agent’s character, and in (IV) I will argue that no factors other than personality traits determine the moral worth of actions.