Navigation: This page 'dooy.info/good.html' ---> Main Page. HELP. Contact. About Page.

On Good

What kinds of Good are there? Moral good? Social good? Common good? Economic good or goods? Why are economic products called "goods"? What is the difference between being good and being just or right? And so on. Here is an idea, which I have not seen anywhere else:

The basic idea of Good as such is meaningful in Dooyeweerd's ethical aspect.
Each other aspect defines a distinct kind of Good.

The Basic Idea of Good

There is an Overall Good - for which English has no good words so it has to borrow words like eudaimonia, shalom, salaam from various other languages. It is about all things working well together, in all their aspects - biotic, psychical, aesthetic, social, economic, jural, etc. At the end of Genesis chapter 1 in the Bible, after God had completed the vast panoply of Creation in all its variety, it was "very good", in which the Hebrew words have connotations of "working as it all should".

So the idea of Good starts from there: what we might call a Multi-aspectual Overall Good.

Goodness and Rightness

A useful differentiation between a good and a just or righteous person is that the just person is functioning well in the juridical aspect and does what is right, fair, just and appropriate (whether defined by laws or rules, or not). While a good person goes beyond what is right to include things like mercy, forgiveness, generosity, openness and even some kind of voluntary vulnerability. The good person loves others and genuinely gives way to others; the just person might or might not do so.

In a way, we might say that the jural aspect enables a kind of zero-sum rewarding or punishment, to curb evil, where as the ethical aspect, whose kernel is self-giving love, enables a positive-sum generation of extra Good that was not there before. Someone does evil, and the good person returns good for that evil. (x Christians believe that God is of this character, not merely a just Judge, but one full of mercy and grace, who returns Good for Evil. In short, as the early Christian writer John put it, "God is love." x)

Kinds of Good

There is social good, good health, good psychological health, economic good (often called benefit), aesthetic goodness, moral goodness, and so on. How do these relate to each other, differ from each other and relate to the Multi-aspectual Overall Good?

One answer I find useful is that each is a contribution to Multi-aspectual Overall Good meaningful in one aspect (see The Uniqueness and Contribution of Each Aspect). Each aspect makes possible its distinct, unique kind of goodness that contributes to the Overall. For example, the physical aspect makes possible some kind of reliable causality of energy, forces, fields, etc. The biotic aspect enables the good that is organisms which can retain their integrity as organisms despite a fluctuating environment - which is the root of good health and ecological goodness. The social aspect enables social good. And so on. Each aspect introduces a kind of Good into Reality that earlier aspects know nothing about, and all kinds of Good, when working together well bring about Multi-aspectual Overall Good. Here is a table with a brief word for each kind of Good, both as good functioning and good repercussions of the function, and in most aspects their evil or harmful counterpart.

Kinds of Good and Harm per aspect: functioning and repercussions 1328,1800

In all these, what might be called moral good could be seen as Good meaningful in the ethical aspect, as extra goodness of any kind in general that is generated by the good functioning of (humans in) Creation.

On Good

The Basic Idea of Good

Goodness and Rightness

Kinds of Good

See Also