The task of this chapter is to show via examples how rational deliberation can embrace the dialectical specification and adoption of an ultimate end. Such realism as I can provide will be important, for an additional source of skepticism about deliberation extending to ultimate ends, beyond those mentioned in §28, is pragmatic rather than principled. It holds, not that the normative force of practical reasoning depends upon taking the ultimate end to be nondeliberable, but that people do not bother to extend their deliberation to the level of the ultimate end, which it views as a philosopher's abstract invention rather than a feature of ordinary deliberations. While philosophers may reason about ultimate ends, and while their reasoning may be subject to holistic checks, this does not mean that we can deliberate about ultimate ends. To counter this debunking form of doubt, I need to show how specification of an ultimate end can indeed enter into an individual's deliberation about what to do. Although this effort leads me into some fairly lengthy exercises at writing fiction, in some respects they remain not nearly detailed enough. In neither of my examples will I be able to do more than merely suggest the groping search for equilibrium that would characterize actual deliberations. By and large, all I can do is to trace out a realistic trajectory of deliberation's conclusions.

VIRTUOUS DELIBERATORS

Since my examples of deliberation that extends to ultimate ends involve deliberators who begin with roughly Aristotelian or liberal commitments, I must confront the suspicion of circularity that this raises.