#  PHIL 274f: The Good and the Fitting 

 





 Semester:   Spring 

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 Year offered:  2026 

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 Link: [Course Website](https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/160634) 

 

 

 

**Graduate seminar (co-taught with Christine Korsgaard).** Some things are good, whereas others are bad, and some emotional responses to those things are fitting, whereas others are unfitting. We will consider recent and historical work on these two pairs of categories (good/bad, fitting/unfitting), as well as their interrelation. Questions to be considered may include: What is the relation between either goodness or fittingness and a thing’s nature? Can goodness be analyzed in terms of fitting attitudes? What is the relation between being good and being good for someone, and can a parallel distinction can be drawn for fittingness? Is badness simply a lack of goodness, or unfittingness a lack of fittingness? Can we aggregate goodness across lives, and fittingness across respects? What kinds of things (people, animals, plants, ecosystems?) have a good that matters morally, and what types of reactions (admiration, blame, pride, envy?) are fitting in a way that has genuine normative significance?