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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Dr. Mortimer J. Adler's 

Six Great Ideas

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The good, real or apparent, can also be divided into the good
we desire to have, the good we desire to do, and the good we
desire to be.

1 . The good we desire to have can be further subdivided into
possessions or perfections, and into goods of choice and goods
of chance. Wealth exemplifies a possession; health a perfection.
Each, as we shall see, is in part at least a good of chance. Only
such perfections as good habits and knowledge are entirely
goods of choice.

All possessions are external goods—goods that exist apart
from the individual who desires to possess them. In addition
to wealth, the category of external goods includes friends or
loved ones and also all the external circumstances of the individual's life that flow from the institutions and arrangements of
the society in which he lives.

As distinguished from possessions, perfections are internal
goods—internal in the sense that they have their existence in
the person rather than apart from him or her. As used here, the
word "perfection" has a restricted connotation. It means only
that which completes or fulfills a potentiality of the human
being—a capacity for development of one sort or another. In
this sense, health is a personal perfection, the pleasures of
sense and aesthetic pleasures are personal perfections, and so
are all forms of knowledge and skill.

The goods of choice are those which we are able to attain
entirely by activities in which we voluntarily engage. If, for
example, certain habits are good not only in themselves, but
also as means to a good life, we can achieve these perfections
through actions entirely within our own power to perform, if
we choose to do so. It would appear to be the case that, like
knowledge, skill, and other good habits, all goods of choice are
internal goods—perfections of the person.

All external goods are goods of chance. While the possession
of them may in part depend upon actions that we voluntarily
perform according to the choices we make, they never depend
solely on what we ourselves choose to do. They are all circum-
stantial goods in the sense that our possession of them depends
either partly or wholly on circumstances beyond our control. In
that sense, they are goods of chance, conferred on us by what
we call "good luck" or "good fortune," and withheld from us
by the misfortunes that befall us.

The goods we desire to have may be either real or apparent
goods, real if they are personal perfections we ought to seek,
such as health, good habits, or knowledge; apparent if they are
possessions we want but do not need. In contrast, the other
two—the goodness that resides in our doing or action and the
goodness that belongs to our being—fall wholly on the side of
real goods we ought to desire.

2 . The good we should desire to do is either an action on our
part that is good for us because it results in our acquirement of
an external possession or a personal perfection that we need; or
it is an action that results in a real good for someone else,
benefiting that other individual or at least not causing injury.
As affecting the welfare of others, we usually speak of an indi-
vidual's actions as right and wrong, or just and unjust.

As we shall see when we come to the consideration of justice,
the notions of right and wrong, in the sphere of conduct that
impinges on the welfare and well-being of others, are subsid-
iary to the notions of good and evil. If we did not first know
what was really good for any human being, we could not ap-
praise actions as right and wrong—as resulting in benefits or
injuries.

3 . The good we should desire to be is the excellence of a good
man or woman. A good man or woman is one who has achieved
the personal perfections that fulfill his or her potentialities or
capacities for being human. Preeminent among these perfec-
tions is the acquired habit of desiring what one ought to desire
and desiring nothing that interferes with obtaining the real
goods one needs to lead a good life. While, as we shall see, a
good man or woman is one who acts justly toward others, good
deeds alone do not make a good human being. That is only one
element in leading a good life.

A good life is made by accumulating in the course of a life-
time everything that is really good and by wanting nothing that
impedes or frustrates this effort. That which appears good to
individuals who are good men and women is really good, for
they are habitually disposed to want what they ought to want,
and not to want what they ought not to.

However, being a good person does not by itself suffice for
the achievement of a good human life. Some of the real goods
a person needs, especially those that are external or circumstan-
tial goods, are goods of chance. Even the attainment of certain
interior perfections are partly dependent upon benign external
circumstances.

That is where the benefactions of a good society come in,
providing the necessary conditions for a good life that the good
person cannot achieve entirely by the choices he or she makes.
An organized community is good to the extent that its institu-
tions and arrangements confer upon its members the real goods
that everyone needs but which, in whole or part, depend upon
external circumstances beyond the individual's control.

Editor’s note: Adler’s assertion that internal goods are at least in part the result of external factors, a good society, is probably not true. As evidence, we look to the example and testimony of Viktor Frankl, a survivor of the concentration camps, who informs us that the heights of personal development were achieved during this dark time. Some, he said, became swine while other became saints. Frankl is famous for his insight that “the last freedom” of human beings is that of choosing one’s direction even in the midst of atrocity. See the pages devoted to Dr. Frankl.

A good human being, a good human life, a good society.
How are these three principal forms of goodness related to one
another?

It would appear that a good society is an external and instru-
mental good, one that the individual needs to aid and abet his
or her effort to make a good life for himself or herself. It would
also appear that having the intrinsic virtue or excellence of a
good human being is indispensable to achieving a good life.

Why this is so will become clearer presently. For the moment,
suffice it to say that a good human life is the ultimate good
toward the attainment of which all other goods are instrumen-
tal. But it is not the highest good in the hierarchy or scale of
particular goods.

At the lowest end of the scale stand the goods that are mere
means—goods that ought never to be desired for their own
sake but always for the sake of some other good. They are good
only to the extent that they are used to obtain goods that fulfill
or satisfy other desires.

In the next rung above, we find goods that not only have the
character of ends, in that they fulfill or satisfy certain desires,
but also serve as means insofar as they are put to use in trying
to achieve still other goods. Such goods, desired both for
their own sake and for the sake of other goods, fall below the
goods they are used to achieve. Wealth and health typify this
level of goods.

The highest grade in the whole scale of particular goods con-
sists of those goods that are desired for their own sake and not
as means to obtain other particular goods. Enjoyable pleasure
is such a good; so also is wisdom. If in the range of particular
goods, there is a single highest good (traditionally called the
summum bonum), it falls here.

It will be noted that at the lowest level of the scale, we find
only external goods. At the next level, we find both posses-
sions, such as wealth, and personal perfections, such as health.
At the highest level, we find only personal perfections, no pos¬
sessions or external goods.

There is one further good—one that cannot be included in
the scale of goods that we have so far considered because it
encompasses the whole scale itself.

All the goods we have so far considered are particular goods.
Each is a partial good, one good among others, not the whole
constituted by the presence of all the goods needed to make a
whole life good. That whole can only be achieved successively
and piecemeal in the course of a lifetime; all the particular or
partial goods that contribute to this result are constitutive
means for achieving the whole.

Even enjoyable pleasure and wisdom among the highest of
the particular goods are less than the whole of goods. Though
each is desired for its own sake and not for the sake of any
other particular good, it does not by itself suffice to satisfy all
desires. In addition to being desired for itself, it is desired for
the sake of a good life—that whole of which all real goods and
some innocuous apparent goods are component parts.

There is still another hierarchy or scale of goodness, one that
belongs in the realm of the good to be rather than the good to
have or the good to do. Here we are confronted with gradations
of goodness that are commensurate with grades of being or
existence itself.

Only absolute nonbeing is absolutely evil. Whatever exists to
any degree of perfection has a grade of goodness comparable to
the perfection of its being or existence. Accordingly, when God
is thought of as the Supreme Being, having an infinite existence
that lacks no perfection, God is also thought of as supremely
good in the scale of beings. This leaves quite open the question
about the moral goodness of God—the benevolence, justice,
and mercy of the Deity.

St. Augustine's comparison of the goodness of a mouse and
of a pearl helps us to understand the goodness commensurate
with being. If asked, "Which would you prefer to have?" Au-
gustine thinks the answer should be a pearl, for it is a more
valuable possession than a mouse. That is certainly true of its
exchange value, and it is likely to be true of its use value and
its enjoyability. However, if asked, "Which would you rather
be?" he thinks the opposite answer should be given, for a living
organism has more being, more potentialities for development,
more power to act, than an inert stone, however attractively
coated.

As we have seen, the goods we desire to have are either
possessions (i.e., external goods) or perfections (i.e., personal
goods). The latter increase or amplify our very being through
actualizing our potentialities. The man or woman who has be-
come a good human being through acquiring the personal per-
fections that everyone should desire to have is also the good
man or woman that everyone should desire to be. The reason
for preferring to be a mouse rather than a pearl is also the
reason for preferring to be a good rather than a bad human
being.