Abstract

The term 'hypergood' is ambiguous and short-lived in the work of Charles Taylor. This ambiguity is preserved in the secondary literature. I argue that a successful interpretation of the concept must be subject to three constraints, which I call the reasoning, regress, and problem constraints, respectively. My interpretation of the concept takes hypergoods to be contingent and reveals them as exemplary of much of what Taylor takes to be wrong with modern moral theory. Identifying the existence of hypergoods is thus a way of diagnosing an inadequate approach to moral life. The challenge is to preserve their force as moral sources without allowing them to dictate our meta-ethics and distort our moral predicament.