Question

Sagoff, "At the Shrine of Our Lady Fatima or Why Political Questions Are Not All Economic."

Answer 1

Answer:

Sagoff's cost-benefit approach establishes that the value of a thing is determined by how much people are willing to pay for it, so the only important values are the ones that the market can assign. This is why that approach is not suitable for explaining our duties with our environment, since we cannot pay for it and the market cannot assign any value to the environment.

Sagoff is a neo-Kantian ethicist because he also believes that individuals were the judges of value (they could assign value to things) not only for them but for their whole communities.

Sagoff's approach differs from Kant's approach since Sagoff believes that the cost-benefit approach doesn't apply to all the goods and services, especially the environment. He believes that the environment has an intrinsic value and therefore is an end to itself, while Kant believed that only humans had intrinsic value and could be an end to themselves.