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In this chapter, I demonstrate that, while incorporating important elements of dialectical theory, value theory is indeed ultimately post-dialectical and virtue-theoretical. These dialectical approaches are still sound and widely applicable, I claim, but, as I have been stating elsewhere, it is only a more comprehensive aretaic theory of value which possesses the capacity to fill many of the theoretical gaps which loom large in these models. I demonstrate, via an analysis of the concept of value, informed by all of our previous analyses, that it is a particular sort of virtue theory which answers the questions I have posed throughout this work which I have claimed that non-aretaic models, in general, fail to answer. I achieve this result, first, by demonstrating that value is what I term "reflexively intrinsic," and, by consequence, that "goodness' can be accurately and adequately defined using the notion of tendential necessity of functions and, subsequently, that betterness can likewise be defined using the notion of comparative tendential necessity of functions. Through the phenomenon of reflexive intrinsicality, I claim, the concepts of value, goodness, betterness, and bestness are inherently teleological and, by consequence, teleologically comparative. I utilize this idea of teleological comparativeness to demonstrate that goodness and value have ultimate foundations in rationality and the Rational Framework, as I have characterized them. As we shall see, rationality constitutes a transcendental conceptual framework which grounds the concept of value itself. It is from the logic of this grounding, I claim, that we can derive all-encompassing answers to even the hardest questions in value theory. The end result is an over-arching, assertoric, aretaic, value-theoretical model which stands grounded on its own but which also acknowledges the usefulness and applicability of the Gewirthian and Habermasean models. This over-arching model, we shall see, is capable of providing answers to some of the profoundest and most personal questions of value.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-02285-7_6

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