An Anatomy of Values

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The author examines the constitution of human ends and analyzes how these ends are ordered. There is, he argues, a complex and structured arrangement to ends and values such as justice, fairness, love, trust, knowledge, and art, which determines in part the priorities and relationships among them. Charles Fried relates these structures to social and legal institutions, maintaining that such institutions can be more completely understood if they are viewed as structures of rational ends mutually pursued rather than solely as means to the attainment of ends. He then more fully and concretely elaborates the problem of the ordering of ends by applying his general theory to the resolution of issues about life and death. How should the fact of death be incorporated into a rational scheme for ordering one’s life? What is a rational attitude toward one’s future self? To what extent and under what circumstances may a moral man impose risk of death upon his fellows?