**Prompt: Martha Nussbaum characterizes a concept of intrinsic value in Plato. Outline what this kind of value involves, and then evaluate the plausibility of the claim that anything has this kind of value or has the markers of it.
Martha Nussbaum’s interpretation of Plato’s philosophy involves a strikingly demanding conception of intrinsic value. A Platonist, when prompted to outline what intrinsic value is, might introduce it in a thought experiment similar to that posed in the introduction of the Nicomachean Ethics: imagine you are, say, eating, and an interlocutor questions why the activity of eating has any value. You might respond by saying eating is necessary for one’s health. The eager interlocutor would then, in turn, question why health has any value. Such a process would ultimately converge at some “final” good—a good that is valued for its own sake rather than as a means for some other good. But would this idea of finality capture what Plato means by an intrinsic good? According to Nussbaum’s interpretation, the answer is a resounding no.
Here is a second approach a Platonist might take, this time taken from the Gorgias: Socrates, in a discussion with Callicles, brings up the example of scratching an itch. Scratching an itch is pleasurable, sure, but it is only pleasurable so far as it satisfies the need which is the itch. Its value is entirely need-relative—if one didn’t feel the need for an itch, it would be preposterous to feel pleasure from scratching. In other words, activities of need-relative value such as scratching do not lead to a positive outcome: rather, they begin from the negative state of having a need and raise the agent to the null state. Non-need-relative value, the Platonist might say, is what constitutes Plato’s conception of intrinsic value. Unfortunately for the Platonist, Nussbaum’s Plato would still be dissatisfied by this answer.
Pressed further, the mildly vexed Platonist might then refer to Plato’s Theory of Forms. As captured by his belief that “all learning is recollection” (Sedley 4), Plato believed philosophical and mathematical knowledge existed a priori and was accessible to our souls. The task of philosophy, then, is to turn away from the shifting outside world and view the stable objects of intellectual enquiry—which he called “forms” (Sedley 8). The Platonist might then say that, under this framework, intrinsic value is value immediately derived from the Form of the Good rather than any fragile contingent context or human need. Intrinsic value, in other words, is value that is nonderivative, metaphysically self-sufficient.
Would Nussbaum’s Plato finally be made content by these responses? Perhaps. Plato would say intrinsic value falls into all three categories: final, non-need-relative, and nonderivative. In fact, Plato would go a step further: he would make the perfectionist claim these three dualities between final and instrumental, need-relative and non-need-relative, and derivative and nonderivative are simply different nomenclatures for the monistic distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value. Such a strong assumption, of course, does not deserve to pass by unnoticed. Nussbaum, in her analysis, acknowledges that “this distinction [of final versus instrumental] is not exactly the same one as the Gorgias’s distinction between merely need-relative and non-need-relative value,” yet dismisses this concern as not “a particularly grave problem” (Nussbaum 145, 146). We will revisit critiques to Plato’s perfectionist assumption later on.
For now, a natural continuation of this discussion is to ask what the criteria are for identifying intrinsic value. Nussbaum brings up three key features: purity, or being unmixed with its contraries; stability, remaining invariant and always accessible independent of circumstance; and truth, leading up to some genuine insight about reality. It is under this framework that Nussbaum justifies Plato’s reverence for the life of a philosopher. Philosophy is pure, as it concerns a priori truths that reside in our soul independent of the ebb and flow of reality. Philosophy is also stable in two different ways: (1) it is the exploration of invariant, immutable Forms, and (2) one could always contemplate philosophy under any circumstance. Philosophy also leads up to a universal truth, as it aims to systematically formulate a theory about the metaphysics of the world. At first glance, it seems the life of a philosopher carries with it immense intrinsic value, at least according to Nussbaum’s Plato. Yet this apparent triumph of the philosophical life invites a deeper discussion of the complexities of Plato’s concept of intrinsic value.
We begin with a concern that Nussbaum herself mentions: according to Plato’s view, the philosopher’s life brings with it intrinsic value to the ascetic observer who is already detached from the distorting influence of human desires and who already lives the philosopher’s life. This, of course, invites the epistemological concern of why it is this philosopher’s viewpoint that should be trusted to evaluate intrinsic value. If value is anthropocentric, it is the viewpoint of the average person that should be trusted, not a quasi-alien philosopher who is detached from all worldly desires. Nussbaum defends Plato here by noting “appetite’s capacity for distortion and self-justification;” only the philosopher who is untangled from such influences can formulate a valid judgement of intrinsic value (Nussbaum 155). Yet the fact that the average observer cannot be an impartial judge of intrinsic value does not automatically grant the philosopher the epistemological advantage. Perhaps rationality alone cannot accurately identify and measure intrinsic value.
Continuing this line of thought, we uncover another interpretative tension that arises from Plato’s intrinsic value, particularly whether intrinsic value is “supervenient” on certain “nonevaluative features” such as the features of purity, stability, and truth that Nussbaum outlines (Zimmerman and Bradley). Here the argument sharply bifurcates into roughly two halves. There is a naturalist view that intrinsic value is scientifically explainable, reducible into descriptive features. Note that this does not directly contradict the nonderivativeness of intrinsic value, as descriptive features are metaphysical properties from which values cannot be derived. However, this naturalist account is problematic on two fronts. First, if intrinsic value is non-emergent and can be reduced into descriptive features, it is difficult to justify how an evaluative property such as value emerges from the union of descriptive objects. Second, under Plato’s Theory of Forms intrinsic value is immediately derived from the irreducible Form of Goodness, which is incompatible with the belief that intrinsic value is reducible into a list of features. Adapting the naturalist account of intrinsic value would necessitate a sweeping revision of the foundations of Plato’s philosophy.
We then move on to the alternative, Moorean non-naturalism, where intrinsic goodness is an irreducible and foundational evaluative property. Although this view brings about fewer metaphysical contradictions, it invalidates the idea of using a set of descriptive features to identify intrinsic value. Nussbaum’s list of purity, stability, and truth becomes more so a list of general markers rather than a set criteria. This, then, undermines the certainty with which Nussbaum’s Plato designates philosophical life as the epitome of intrinsic value. More generally, anything can have the general markers of intrinsic value, but one can never identify intrinsic value on the basis of descriptive features.
It is interesting to note here that Moorean non-naturalism does not entirely preclude a rational test for identifying intrinsic good. A more modern development is the Fitting Attitude Theories of Value, where something is intrinsically valuable if it is morally fitting to treat it as such. This is compatible with the irreducibility of intrinsic value as it identifies intrinsic value in normative terms, rather than descriptive properties. This, of course, comes with its own swath of complications. Some argue intrinsic goodness is more primitive than moral fittingness, and thus it is paradoxical to identify goodness using fittingness as the criterion. Others subscribe to a “buck-passing” view, where both goodness and fittingness are grounded elsewhere without a hierarchy of primacy (Zimmerman and Bradley). The question of whether it is possible to identify intrinsic value involves a rich history that we have only given a brief account of.
A second line of inquiry questions Plato’s ambitious metaphysical assumption that the dualities of final versus instrumental, derivative versus nonderivative, and need-relative versus non-need-relative value all converge into the monastic distinction of intrinsic versus extrinsic value. More modern philosophers such as Korsgaard disagree with this account, giving examples such as a “rare stamp” that has final and non-need-relative value that is nonetheless derivative as its value is derived from its contextual rarity (Zimmerman and Bradley). If these distinctions are indeed independent, how would Plato’s perspective on philosophical life need to be revised? Revisiting Nussbaum’s analysis of Plato, Plato’s argument in the Gorgias on the superficiality of need-relative value would still hold ground, yet it would be an overextension to use this to criticize desire as desire is not necessarily need-based. More fundamentally, significant gaps between the three versions of intrinsic value would arise, which would require major revisions to correct.
Plato’s conception of intrinsic value, as reconstructed by Nussbaum, thus emerges as both philosophically powerful and deeply unstable. Its aspiration toward metaphysical completeness grants it an undeniable moral grandeur, yet it is this same ambition that endangers its coherence across different philosophical frameworks. Naturalist reduction endangers its metaphysical groundwork, Moorean non-naturalism endangers its evaluative power, and contemporary distinctions of value endangers its foundational definitions. Plato’s theory may function more as a thought-provoking philosophical ideal than a robust description of the world. Yet, fragile as it may be, it is a theory rich in history and complexity that clearly merits its esteemed position in philosophy.
Works Cited
Nussbaum, Martha C. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Sedley, David. “An introduction to plato’s theory of forms.” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, vol. 78, July 2016, pp. 3–22, https://doi.org/10.1017/s1358246116000333.
Zimmerman, Michael J., and Ben Bradley. “Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman, Summer 2025 ed., Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2025, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2025/entries/value-intrinsic-extrinsic/