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Human Goods An understanding of human goods is essential to an understanding of morality. The basic moral norm is: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. To love God is to rejoice in his goodness and to cooperate with his plan. To love our neighbor and love ourselves is to will what is really good for the neighbor (and thus work energetically for that good) and to will what is really good for ourselves. Thus, the basic moral criterion concerns what is really good for one’s neighbor and oneself; and this is to say it concerns human goods. “Human activity proceeds from man: it is also ordered to him. When he works, not only does he transform matter and society, but he fulfills himself” (Vatican Council II, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, 35). This point can be seen in another way. We can only choose what seems in itself good for us or something that will help bring about what seems in itself good. What seems good to us is something that has some natural appeal to us or is connected with it (either as a means toward it or as a pleasurable aspect of it). What has a natural appeal to us is that to which we have a natural inclination; and that to which we have a natural inclination is what perfects us as human beings. Thus, we have a natural interest in (and a natural inclination to) life, health, knowledge, friendship, and so on. By contrast, eating grass, chasing rabbits, and so on, have no natural appeal to us, and so do not occur to us as objects to be chosen. Basic human goods actualize potentialities that belong to us as human beings; they are basic reasons for acting; they are intrinsic aspects of the “full-being” of human persons. These goods are objective. What is really good for a person is that which perfects this person or builds up this person. What is bad for the person is what diminishes this person, what deprives him or her of something he or she could have or be. If some people think sickness or ignorance is good, they are simply mistaken; if some think health or knowledge is not good, then they are mistaken. It is objectively true – that is, true even if you or I think otherwise – that health and knowledge perfect, build up, and actualize the potentialities of a person, while sickness and ignorance diminish, or take away from, a person’s perfection or fulfillment. Moreover, these goods are perfective of all human beings. They are transcultural. It is true for all human beings that health and knowledge perfect them while sickness and ignorance diminish them. This is because human beings have certain basic potentialities in common. We pick out some entities in the universe and call them “human beings” precisely because they share a complex nature in common, that is, they have certain basic potentialities in common. The basic human goods are as follows. Human beings are living bodily things, physical organisms. As physical organisms, human beings are perfected by life and health. As intellectual, human beings are perfected by knowledge of truth and aesthetic experience. As both bodily and intellectual, human beings are perfected or fulfilled in making and doing things for their own sake, that is, skillful performance or play. As complex beings, human beings are fulfilled by the harmony of the different aspects of the self or self-integration. As persons who form relationships with other human beings, they are fulfilled by friendship and society. Harmony between one’s choice and what is morally true is practical reasonableness. The harmony between people and God is religion, an important basic human good. Finally, considering human beings as masculine and feminine persons who form communities that include aspects of all of the basic goods, there is the human good of marriage. Such basic human goods provide an objective standard for what is right and wrong. Pope John Paul II says: “It is in the light of the dignity of the human person – dignity which must be affirmed for its own sake – that reason grasps the specific moral value of certain goods toward which the person is naturally inclined” (The Splendor of Truth, Veritatis Splendor, 48). Choices respectful of every basic human good are morally good; choices that in one way or another diminish one’s respect for basic human goods are morally bad.
See: Absolute Moral Norms; Deontology; Legalism; Modes of Responsibility; Natural Law; Relativism; Teleological Ethics; Ten Commandments. Suggested Readings: CCC 1749-1756. John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth, Veritatis Splendor. G. Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 1, Christian Moral Principles, pp. 115-140. G. Grisez and R. Shaw, Fulfillment in Christ, pp. 49-59. Patrick Lee Russell Shaw. Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine. Copyright © 1997, Our Sunday Visitor.
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