Human nature and goodness › Does goodness guarantee happiness?

The relationship between goodness and happiness is a separate problem, and Foot devotes a chapter to it. If moral goodness is connected with human flourishing, it can be tempting to conclude that a good person must enjoy a happier or safer life. That conclusion would need further argument.

A person can act honestly and lose something valuable. Another can act dishonestly and escape the consequences. These possibilities do not, by themselves, show that honesty lacks value. They show why its justification cannot rest on an assurance that every honest action will pay.

Foot's later discussion of rationality takes the difficulty seriously by considering costly moral action. She asks whether an action can be rational even when it goes against the agent's immediate self-interest. That question would have little force if moral conduct simply guaranteed personal benefit.

For a reader, it helps to distinguish several claims: that a virtue has a place in human good; that possessing it contributes to living well; and that exercising it guarantees a desirable outcome in a particular situation. The last is much stronger. Neither the plant analogy nor the language of flourishing establishes it automatically. Keeping these claims separate prevents a philosophical account of virtue from turning into an unsupported promise of wellbeing.