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ADAMS, Robert Merrihew. Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics. New York: Oxford, 1999. xiv + 410 pp. Cloth, $45.00-In this substantive book, Robert Adams distills and crystallizes much of his previous work into an impressive two-tiered ethical framework: a divine nature theory of the Good and a divine command theory of the morally obligatory. The result is an expansive, integrated, and sophisticated ethical theory that merits great attention. Four major parts comprise the book: "The Nature of the Good," "Loving the Good," "The Good and the Right," and "The Epistemology of Value."
Beginning in part 1 with a theory of the intrinsic Good that is both theistic and Platonic (in terms of standards, not archetypes), Adams offers a bottom-up ethical framework in which the Good is transcendent and infinite. His nonconsequentialist theory is bottom-up because it begins with a semantic analysis of value language, but its eventual focus is on metaphysical questions. Generalizing insights from direct reference theorists, Adams suggests that what is given by the semantic meaning of a moral term is a role that the nature of the referent is to play. Aiming at a measure of both realism and internalism, he argues that the character of our pursuit of excellence determines what would satisfy the pursuit, fixing the signification of our value terminology to an objective property. Adams takes three things, namely skeptical of value-free evaluations, science-inspired epistemology,...