Educational Goods: Flourishing, Trade-offs and Perfectionism

Abstract This paper argues that the Educational Goods framework developed by Brighouse, Ladd, Loeb, and Swift is more useful to educational decision makers when it is underpinned by a perfectionist approach without neutralist constraints. This is because when policy-makers are to make trade-offs between the relevant flourishing-related capacities, some value trade-offs will be necessary between the educational goods because the conditions which are required to develop some of the capacities may compete in nature. I argue that, even though the educational goods and relevant capacities can be supported by appealing to either a plausible perfectionist conception of political morality or a plausible anti-perfectionist account, ultimately, this is only of theoretical significance. This is because anti-perfectionist considerations are unhelpful in informing decision makers as to how to operationalize the trade-offs in question. Because of this, the paper concludes that the framework becomes much easier to operationalize when it is underpinned by a perfectionist understanding of human flourishing.