The guise of the good in the story of one's life

Abstract According to the Guise of the Good (GG) thesis, desire represents its object as good in some respect. A common strategy for defending this thesis has been to appeal to intuitive cases where an agent's behavior can only be made intelligible by assuming that the motivating desire is evaluative. This article offers an alternative defense by demonstrating how a diachronic perspective, which considers an agent's desires over the course of her life, strengthens the case for a significant connection between desire and evaluation. Specifically, it argues that this perspective supports a cross‐temporal version of the GG thesis, which explains how an agent's various motivations are unified over time under a guiding desire with evaluative content. The article also challenges an alternative account of motivational unity that appeals to the distinction between instrumental and intrinsic desires, demonstrating how the cross‐temporal GG thesis is better suited to explain the unity.