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Value and virtue

University of Toronto, Canada, lambek{at}utsc.utoronto.ca, m.lambek{at}lse.ac.uk, London School of Economics, UK

This article offers suggestions for situating value in the liberal economic sense with respect to values understood in a broader, ethical sense. It is a conceptual exercise in bringing together ideas about value, which pertain largely to objects, with ethical ideas of virtue, which concern acts and character. I argue that economic value and ethical value are incommensurable insofar as the former deals with ostensibly relative, commensurable values and the latter with ostensibly absolute and incommensurable ones. The articulation of incommensurable values is better expressed as acts or practices of judgment rather than of choice. I suggest that sacrifice may be a site where meta-value is established.

Key Words: commensurability • ethics • happiness • judgment • practice • sacrifice • value • virtue

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