Luper-Foy disputes a widely held belief that excelling in one or more areas of human endeavor is essential, or, in a weaker form of the argument, contributory, to the goodness and meaningfulness of a person's life. He calls such beliefs 'Competitivism', and he notes that it is important beyond its private applications, for it is easy to imagine competiti-vist theories of public justice and right, too.

The ground is cleared by defining some concepts. Competitivism differs from perfectionism in so far as the latter implies achieving some objective standard. The essence of competitivism is surpassing others.

But what do we mean by this? Is it enough to merely be better than average? Luper-Foy points out that such a definition would not be satisfactory as applied to the goodness and value of life. We don't want to say that one's life can be considered good by dint of the badness of others. Furthermore, we don't want to define the value of life in such a way that not everyone could (in theory) achieve it. But by definition, not every person's life can be better than average. Of course, everyone's life could be unique or superior in some respect. But if we imagine a Twin Earth which is quantitatively equal to our own world, we would not want to say that the existence of such a place, unknown to us, would make our lives worse off by the mere fact that we were no longer literally unique.

What becomes evident at this point is that 'competitiveness' is bound to the idea of community. Our lives needn't be unique or superior vis- a~ vis every other real or possible being, but only within some relevant group. Luper-Foy defines this relevant community in which we compete as that body of persons against whom we are ranked by those whose opinions we care about. But this suggests that superiority is not good in its own right, but is only instrumental in bringing us the esteem of others. The strict interpretation of competitivism, then, is in error.

Luper-Foy also considers other forms of competitivism. One, which he finds in Aristotle, defines what is good (of its kind) as that which possesses that degree of a property possessed at least by the average; e.g., a good student is one who tests better than the average student. This form of goodness is 'universalizable' in that all students could be better than the present average. But Luper-Foy notes the arbitrariness of setting such a standard, including an arbitrariness in determining ■who should be part of the group being averaged.

The moderate form of competitivism holds that excellence, while not essential to a good life, does contribute to it. But Luper-Foy points out that it is at best still an instrumental virtue. We seek to excel because we value the qualities which we are striving for (e.g., being a good swimmer), or for the esteem that it will bring us. But our superiority to others is not of value in itself. In fact, it is doubtful that it is good even for obtaining esteem insofar as such esteem, conceived as the opinion of society, itself seems to be overrated.

But esteem within a more limited community does seem to contribute to the good life. For Luper-Foy, what is important in life is our relationship with others who matter to us (what he calls an associative unit). Any view of the meaningful life that does not begin here, he states, has things backward.