What is goodness?”

On Mistaking Morality

By Daniel McInerny

In a lecture I listened to recently via podcast, a distinguished evolutionary biologist asked the question, “What is goodness?” In developing his answer, he distinguished between two views of goodness: the absolutist and the relativist. The absolutist view holds that goodness is a “formula” or “rule” that can be applied, always and everywhere, to whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. The relativist view says simply that there is no single, “one-size-fits-all” rule of goodness for human beings. The good is simply the name we give to the collection of our preferences.

I found it interesting that in setting up the history of ethics in this way, the evolutionary biologist left out a third understanding of goodness, the one, in fact, that dominated Western culture for some 1,500 odd years until the Enlightenment and which, to this day, is the core of the Church’s moral theology. This is the view that goodness is the exercise of virtue, that is, of perfected character.

Interesting that he left it out, but not at all surprising, given that he is an ardently secular evolutionary biologist. What is more surprising is that many of my fellow Catholics reduce the question of goodness to more or less the same dichotomy. According to them, goodness is following the moral law, and relativism is its opposite.

As with most mistaken opinions, there’s a kernel of truth in this view. After all, thereare rules in the Catholic understanding of the good life. We have the precepts of the natural law as well as the commandments of divine positive law. And these, to put it mildly, are no small consideration. But in the tradition of the virtues, the good life always goes beyond mere rule-following.

Consider a sports analogy. What is excellence in soccer? Does it simply come down to following what is found in the Official Rules? When a world-class player such as Barcelona’s “Leo” Messi exhibits his excellence on the field, his excellence is always more, much more, than what can be found in the rulebook. Following the rules is essential for his success, no doubt. One serious infraction can see him ejected from the game. But his excellence, his soccer-playing virtue, really comes down to his habitual ability to create, to improvise, to dazzle, to take the game boldly where no other player has taken it before.

...

Read more: www.thecatholicthing.org