Can Platonic ethics synthesize deontology and utilitarianism?

[Kingpoleon]

https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=philosophy_pubs

First, if my account is acceptable, then Platonism can claim the great strength of Utilitarianism. It doesn’t quite qualify as “naturalistic” in the narrow sense, but it is founded on a common and readily accessible experience. While I have not explained how this experience is possible, I believe its reality is evident. It is not a special revelation vouchsafed only to a few, though it is possible that a great many of us have been trained to ignore it.

Second, this approach has the advantage over Utilitarianism—shares the advantage with Deontology—that it locates the value of things in the things themselves, making it independent of human perceptions and interests. Unlike Deontology, however, it does not derive our obligations toward other things and other persons from some categorical imperative. It views obligations, duties, rights, and so on, as attempts to articulate what the “intrinsic” value of things demands of us, what sort of behavior is called for by the invitations things issue to us, what kinds of respect represent an appropriate response to these invitations.

A Platonic ethics explains egalitarian principles by alleging that to be human is to participate in a particular way in the Good, and all our talk of human rights is but a way of expressing with fine detail and specificity the kind of treatment due to a creature which exhibits the Good in that way. But in doing so, it need not deny the goodness of particular relationships in which others are valued for more than their mere humanity, relationships whose maintenance requires special responses which can be articulated as special obligations or priorities.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

In fact, the diversity of these manifestations is so great that it is possible to doubt that there is any unity to the class of things rightly called “good.” The Platonic philosopher does not pretend to possess a single, univocal definition which captures that unity. Indeed the belief in such a unity is perhaps better denominated a hope than a belief.

(...)I have already described belief in the unity of goods as a kind of leap of faith. Surely the belief in the existence of the form of the Good is an even greater leap. Is there any way to defend such a leap? Perhaps some element of faith, or as I suggested earlier, of hope, is ineliminable here, but can we at least assure ourselves that the platform from which we make the leap is solid ground?

Apparently not.

[Kingpoleon]

In fact, the diversity of these manifestations is so great that it is possible to doubt that there is any unity to the class of things rightly called “good.” The Platonic philosopher does not pretend to possess a single, univocal definition which captures that unity. Indeed the belief in such a unity is perhaps better denominated a hope than a belief.

(...)I have already described belief in the unity of goods as a kind of leap of faith. Surely the belief in the existence of the form of the Good is an even greater leap. Is there any way to defend such a leap? Perhaps some element of faith, or as I suggested earlier, of hope, is ineliminable here, but can we at least assure ourselves that the platform from which we make the leap is solid ground?

Apparently not.

It remains rather unclear how distinctive this is from MacIntyre’s telos. It is unfortunate that we find little further literature proposing this synthesis, as it strikes me as decidedly interesting if possible.