W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good, 1930.

III

THE MEANING OF 'GOOD'

A study of the meaning of 'good' and of the nature of goodness should begin by recognizing that there is a wide diversity of senses in which the word is used. The first distinction, perhaps, to be drawn is that between (A) the adjunctive or attributive use of the word, as when we speak of a good runner or of a good poem, and (B) the predicative use of it, as when it is said that knowledge is good or that pleasure is good. It is evident that in ordinary usage the first meaning -- that of 'good of its kind' -- is much the commoner; it appears also to be the earlier.1 Within the attributive use of the word we may distinguish (1) its application to persons, and (2) its application to things. In case (1) the root idea expressed by 'good' seems to be that of success or efficiency. We ascribe to some one a certain endeavour, and describe him as a good so-and-so if we think him comparatively successful in this endeavour. It might be thought that in certain cases (e. g. 'a good singer', 'a good doctor') another idea is in our minds, viz. that the person in question ministers to our pleasure, or to our health -- in general to the satisfaction of some desire of ours. But our pleasure or our health comes in only incidentally in such cases; it comes in just because the endeavour we are imputing to the person in question is the endeavour to give us pleasure or to improve our health. It does not, therefore, it would appear, form part of the general connotation of 'good' when thus used. We can in this same sense call a man 'a good liar', not because he contributes to the satisfaction of any of our desires, but because we think him successful in what he sets out to do.

In case (2) there appear to be various elements included in what we mean by 'good'. We seem to mean in the first place (a) 'ministering to some particular human interest'. A good knife is essentially one that can be successfully used for cutting, a good poem one that arouses aesthetic pleasure in us. But there is also here (b) the notion that the thing in question is one [66] in which the maker of it has successfully achieved his purpose -- a notion which might be called the 'passive' counterpart of the notion explained under (1). As a rule both the notions (a) and (b) appear to be involved in our application of 'good' to anything other than persons; but sometimes the one and sometimes the other predominates. There is, however, (c) a third element, less seriously intended, in our application of 'good' to non-persons. When we speak of a good lie or of a good sunset we are half-personalizing lies and sunsets and thinking of this particular lie or sunset as succeeding in that which all lies or sunsets are trying to achieve; i. e. we are, not quite seriously, transferring to non-persons the meaning of 'good' appropriate to persons.

Further, we have to note that 'good' in its application to persons has a special sense in which it stands for moral excellence. This is the case whether we emphasize the adjective or the noun in the phrase 'a good man'. Both 'a good man', as opposed to a strong, clever, handsome, &c, man, and 'a good man', as opposed to a good poet, plumber, scholar, &c, stand for moral excellence. The tendency to limit 'good' to the meaning 'morally good' seems not to be involved in the original connotation of the word, which is originally expressive of indefinite commendation.2 The limitation seems to me to have arisen in the following way. Mankind has, in an unsystematic way, reflected a good deal on the question, what things are good in themselves, intrinsically good, and has come to think that certain dispositions (of which the most conspicuous are conscientiousness and benevolence) are the things that are most certainly and in the highest degree good in themselves; and it has tended more and more to adapt the adjunctive use of the word to the predicative use, and apply it par excellence to men characterized by such dispositions.

It is to be noted that 'good' in the sense of'good of its kind' is doubly relative. It is in the first place relative to the kind -- to what the kind is aiming at (when the word is applied to [67] persons) or to the activity which produces the kind or to the interest which the kind subserves (when the word is applied to things). When we call a person or a thing 'a good so-and-so' we do not imply that it is necessarily good in any respect other than that expressed in the noun. What is a good x may be a bad y or z. And 'good of its kind' is relative in a further sense, viz. that it is comparative. We have in mind what we suppose to be a rough average of the excellence of the members of the kind, and we call anything better than this good and anything worse than it bad, not implying that there is any fixed neutral point at which what is good ends and what is bad begins. 'Good' in this usage means 'better than the average' or perhaps 'considerably better than the average', and 'bad' 'worse than the average' or 'considerably worse than the average'. Whether 'good' is used with reference to successful endeavour or to utility, we do not imply, nor usually suppose, that there is a definite line between success and failure, or between utility and inutility, and that the things we call good are in any other than a comparative sense good, or those we call bad in any other than a comparative sense bad.

Finally we may note that 'good' in the sense of 'good of its kind' may be applied not only to an individual which is a good instance of its species, but also to a species which is a good species of its genus. We may say not only 'that is a good sonnet', but 'the sonnet is a good poetical form'.

We may turn now to the predicative use of 'good'. But it must be noted that the grammatical difference is not a sure clue to the difference of usage. Often when we say 'x is good' we mean that it is a good so-and-so, and the universe of discourse makes it clear what noun is to be understood. What I wish to call attention to now is the cases in which there is no such implication, as when it is said that 'courage is good' or 'pleasure is good'. In such a usage, 'good' is not relative in either of the senses just pointed out. We do not mean that courage or pleasure is a successful or useful instance of a species, or species of a genus, nor do we mean that it is merely comparatively good, rising above the average of its kind. In both these respects 'good' in this usage is an absolute term. [68]

Within this usage, however, several varieties have to be distinguished, (1) In the first place, 'good' may here still mean 'useful'. A hedonist may call virtue good, though he means only that it is conducive to pleasure. But while in calling a thing good of its kind (when this refers to usefulness) we mean simply that it conduces to the end things of its kind are meant to conduce to (so that we may call a particular poison gas a good poison gas, whatever we may think of the value of the ends subserved by poison gases), in calling a thing good absolutely (though still in the sense that it is useful) we mean that it is a means to an end which is good; i.e. 'good' in this usage is a complex notion implying both a causal relation between the thing judged good and a certain effect, and the goodness of the effect. Thus this usage points directly to another (2), viz. that in which 'good' means 'intrinsically good'. I use this phrase rather than 'good as an end', because the latter phrase taken strictly would imply that the things referred to are good only when desired, and therefore only when nonexistent. But that which is intrinsically good is not good only when it is desired. If it is a thing good to be desired when not yet existent, it is also a thing to be approved when it exists and to be regretted when it has perished, and its goodness is no more closely connected with the first of these attitudes than with the other two. The intrinsically good is best defined as that which is good apart from any of the results it produces.

(3) There is a sense of 'good' which Professor Moore has distinguished from that conveyed by the expression 'intrinsically good', as a narrower sense than this. He points out3 that hedonistic utilitarianism 'does not assert that pleasure is the only thing intrinsically good, and pain the only thing intrinsically evil. On the contrary, it asserts that any whole which contains an excess of pleasure over pain is intrinsically good, no matter how much else it may contain besides: and similarly that any whole which contains an excess of pain over pleasure is intrinsically bad.' What that theory asserts is that pleasure is the only thing 'ultimately good' or 'good for its own sake'. Both 'intrinsically good' and 'ultimately good' imply that the [69] thing in question would be good, even if it existed quite alone. 'We may, in short, divide intrinsically good things into two classes: namely (1) those which, while as wholes they are intrinsically good, nevertheless contain some parts which are not intrinsically good; and (2) those which either have no parts at all, or, if they have any, have none but what are themselves intrinsically good.' And he uses 'ultimately good' to denote the second of these classes. 'Good throughout' would express more obviously the same meaning.

The distinction is an important one. A whole, for instance, which contains good elements and indifferent ones, but none that are bad, is good 'apart from its consequences' and 'would be good even if it existed quite alone', and is thus intrinsically good, in the sense defined. But if the indifferent elements not only are themselves indifferent but do not contribute to the goodness of the whole, the whole is good not for its own sake but for the sake of its good elements, and is thus not ultimately good, in the sense defined. It might seem as if the distinction answered to Aristotle's distinction between that which has a certain attribute strictly qua itself (η αυτο), and that which has it in virtue of an element of itself (κατα μερος); while the wider distinction between the intrinsically good and the good as a means answers roughly to Aristotle's wider distinction between that which has an attribute in virtue of itself and that which has it in virtue of a concomitant (καθ' &alphaντο and κατασνμβεβηκος). But Professor Moore would not accept this identification, for his well-known doctrine of organic unities states that elements in themselves indifferent or bad may yet contribute to the goodness of a whole in which they occur. Thus a whole containing, say, one good and one indifferent element may have a goodness greater than that of its good element, and is then not simply good 'in virtue of a part of itself, while nevertheless it is not 'ultimately good'.

The importance of this doctrine is difficult to assess; for it must be admitted that clear instances of 'organic unities' in this sense are rather hard to discover. At first sight, one would say that the clearest examples are to be found in the regions of aesthetic and of economic value, (a) In the aesthetic region, [70] it is a familiar fact that some detail of a poem, say, or of a picture, which if it stood alone would have little or no aesthetic value, yet contributes greatly to the effectiveness of the whole. But if the view to be suggested later4 is true, that beauty is not a form of intrinsic value, but only the power in an object of evoking something that has value, the aesthetic experience, then a beautiful object is not a case in point since the only value that it or any of its parts has is an instrumental value. (b) In the economic region, it is a familiar fact that a pair of boots is worth more than twice as much as a single boot, and an assembled machine much more than the parts when unassembled. But here the values in question are still more obviously instrumental, not intrinsic, and therefore not an illustration of the doctrine.

Professor Moore's examples are not very convincing. Take for instance his first illustration.5 'It seems to be true that to be conscious of a beautiful object is a thing of great intrinsic value; whereas the same object, if no one be conscious of it, has certainly comparatively little value, and is commonly held to have none at all. But the consciousness of a beautiful object is certainly a whole of some sort in which we can distinguish as parts the object on the one hand and the being conscious on the other. Now this latter factor occurs as part of a different whole, whenever we are conscious of anything; and it would seem that some of these wholes have at all events very little value, and may even be indifferent or positively bad. Yet we cannot always attribute the slightness of their value to any positive demerit in the object which differentiates them from the consciousness of beauty; the object itself may approach as near as possible to absolute neutrality. Since, therefore, mere consciousness does not always confer great value upon the whole of which it forms a part, even though its object may have no great demerit, we cannot attribute the great superiority of the consciousness of a beautiful thing over the beautiful thing itself to the mere addition of the value of consciousness to that of the beautiful thing. Whatever the intrinsic merit of consciousness may be, it does not give to the whole of which it [71] forms a part a value proportioned to the sum of its value and that of its object.' This analysis can surely not be accepted. Consciousness, by which I think Professor Moore means apprehension, is a state of a mind, and does not include its object (say, a body) as a part of itself. The only whole which could be said to include consciousness plus its object is the whole (if it can be called a whole) consisting of the object plus the consciousness of it. The true analysis of the consciousness of a beautiful object, it would seem, is not into consciousness plus the beautiful object, but into (a) its being an instance of consciousness in general, and (b) its being an instance of consciousness of something beautiful. And it seems to owe its whole value to the second of the facts named.

Or again take another of Professor Moore's examples.6 'If we compare the value of a certain amount of pleasure, existing absolutely by itself, with the value of certain "enjoyments", containing an equal amount of pleasure, it may become apparent that the "enjoyment" is much better than the pleasure, and also, in some cases, much worse. In such a case it is plain that the "enjoyment" does not owe its value solely to the pleasure it contains, although it might easily have appeared to do so, when we only considered the other constituents of the enjoyment, and seemed to see that, without the pleasure, they would have had no value. It is now apparent, on the contrary, that the whole "enjoyment" owes its value quite equally to the presence of the other constituents, even though it may be true that the pleasure is the only constituent having any value by itself.' The situation here is that there are pleasurable states of mind (e. g. enjoyments of beauty) which are judged to have more intrinsic value than equally pleasurable states which were merely pleasurable states could have. And Professor Moore seems willing to admit that the element other than pleasantness in the first kind of states of mind may have no value, or a value less than the excess value of these states over the merely pleasurable ones. If this be so, the case would certainly illustrate the doctrine of organic unities. But it seems at least arguable that the element, other than pleasure, in the complex state -- the element [72] of insight, or whatever we may prefer to call it -- has great intrinsic value, enough to account entirely for the superior value of the whole in which it is an element. And if so, the case will not illustrate the doctrine of organic unities.

There seems, however, to be at least one case which illustrates the doctrine. Few people would hesitate to say that a state of affairs in which A is good and happy and B bad and unhappy is better than one in which A is good and unhappy and B bad and happy, even if A is equally good in both cases, B equally bad in both cases, A precisely as happy in the first case as B is in the second, and B precisely as unhappy in the first case as A is in the second. The surplus value of the first whole arises not from the value of its elements but from the co-presence of goodness and happiness in one single person, and of badness and unhappiness in another. And it is probable that the principle has other applications, though it is hard to be sure of these in detail.

The importance of the doctrine so far as its application goes is somewhat doubtful. But its truth in the abstract seems unquestionable. We have no right to assume that the value of a whole is precisely equal to the sum of the values of its elements taken separately. It may owe some of its value to the co-presence of certain of its elements in certain relations to one another; and this co-presence of its elements cannot fairly be called another element and thus taken to justify us in saying that the value of the whole is the sum of the values of its elements.

In view of his doctrine of organic unities, Professor Moore holds that there is yet another sense of good, (4), that must be recognized. 'When we say that a thing is "good" we may mean either (1) that it is intrinsically good or (2)7 that it adds to the value of many intrinsically good wholes or (3) that it is useful or has good effects.'7 The second of these three meanings is properly distinguished both from the meaning 'intrinsically good' and from the meaning 'instrumentally good', and might be called 'contributively good'. But it may be doubted if it is a sense in which the word 'good' is often actually used. [73] For when a whole A+B is thought to be intrinsically good, its goodness is usually taken to be either equal to that of one of its elements A, B not being good in any sense (except perhaps the instrumental sense), or if the goodness of the whole is taken to be greater than that of A, an intrinsic goodness accounting for the excess goodness of the whole is ascribed to B. In fact, in so far as the clear recognition of the principle of organic unities is novel, this fourth sense of 'good' cannot have been any one of the ordinary meanings of good, though many of the things that have been called good may in fact have been good only in this sense.

It is, I think, clear that it is the predicative rather than the attributive senses of 'good' that are most important for philosophy. And of the predicative senses, the first or instrumental is clearly a complex notion including (a) the notion of a causal relation between something and something else, and (b) the notion of the intrinsic goodness of the effect. It contains nothing but these two elements. And of these two, it would be foreign to our purpose to embark upon a discussion of causality. We are left therefore with the notions of the intrinsically good, the ultimately good, and the contributively good. Further, feeling uncertain about the application in fact (though I do not doubt the truth) of the principle of organic unities, I regard the things that are intrinsically but not ultimately good as owing, generally speaking, their value to those elements in them that are ultimately good; as being good, in fact, 'in virtue of a part of themselves', the other parts of them being irrelevant to their goodness. In ethics we have to take account of wholes that are intrinsically but not ultimately good. For it is certain that when we act we produce, along with any intrinsically good or bad results that we produce, many others that are neither (e. g. states of bodies). What we have to choose between the production of is not states of affairs all of whose elements are intrinsically good or intrinsically bad, but states of affairs many of whose elements are neither. But these elements will (except in so far as they may be contributively good) afford us no reason for choosing to produce one such whole state rather than another. And similarly in the parts that are intrinsically but [74] not ultimately good, the sub-parts that are not intrinsically good will afford us no reason for trying to produce such parts. What we must concentrate our attention upon is the elements that are ultimately good; the others must be treated as mere inevitable accompaniments of these. The notion of the ultimately good -- the notion, that is to say, of that which is good strictly for its own sake and neither for the sake of its results nor for the sake of an element in itself -- is thus the central and fundamental one.

But whatever is ultimately good is also intrinsically good, i. e. is good apart from its consequences, or would be good even if it were quite alone. We must make sure therefore that we understand (as well as we can) the nature of intrinsic goodness. And if we can once understand this, there will be little to add about the further feature which distinguishes the ultimately from the merely intrinsically good. We have simply to add that the ultimately good as distinct from the merely intrinsically good contains no element that is not intrinsically good.


Notes

1 N.E.D., s.v.' Good'.

2 Cf. the N.E.D.'s primary definition of the word: 'The most general adjective of commendation, implying the existence in a high, or at least satisfactory, degree of characteristic qualities which are either admirable in themselves or useful for some purpose.'

3 Ethics, 73.

4 pp. 127-31.

5 Principia Ethica, 28-9.

6 Principia Ethica, 188.

7 = Our (4).

8 Ethics, 250.