Why Human Virtues Obtain in the Natural World

Sammanfattning: This essay aims to connect naturalism and virtue-ethics to a form of realism about values. The thesis advanced in the essay relies heavily on the Wittgensteinian concepts language-game and weltanschauung as explanatory tools for how values can be both real and unreal, both objective and subjective, both at the same time but not from the same perspective. It is argued that a good life is a concept that is grounded in biological facts but that the normativity inherent in this concept is a relational property that no scientific investigation can reveal or enlighten. Interwoven in the exposition is the approach to norms and values that was first articulated by Aristotle and it is argued that virtue-ethics is well endowed to expound and investigate ethical questions at all depth since it operates with a deflated metaphysics of values and is adapted to the relational character of normativity. It is also suggested that moral properties others than those advocated by virtue ethics might survive being naturalized but since moral properties is so variegated no general conclusion can be drawn from the results obtained in this study.