The aesthetic valuation of individual objects cannot be completely reduced to rules or definitions, for the concrete individual contains more than any rule can encompass and cannot be defined qua individual by finite predication. Such goods cannot be prejudged. The moral framework of capitalism in the free market, as we will see, provides the answer to that problem. Although we may be restrained in practice because of our sense of ignorance in Socratic absolutism and Socratic situationism, morality as such admits of no exceptions. Morality fundamentally concerns the acceptable means towards the ends of action.
Ideal ethics is the evaluation of ends , purposes, and consequences of action.
Morality itself is a subcase of such ends. The force of evaluation of means and ends may become roughly balanced in that the force of obligation of morality, which is the only true obligation, stands over and against the existence of the consequences of action. The existence of bad consequences may be regarded as of significance comparable to the force of moral obligation to do what is right, creating moral dilemmas. Ideal ethics contains not just goods as ends but also goods as non-moral virtues of character. Hortative virtues may be goods for the self or goods for others.