leo burghaus

Because we all think we have a shared understanding of goodness, we don’t speak much about what it means to be a good person. I don’t believe we have a proper global definition for it. But we still use it on a daily basis to judge our family, friends, co-workers, citizens, politicians, billionaires. Nothing is as universally respected as being a good person. But what do we mean by that?

Behind all the fluff, most people mean either inoffensive or well-intentioned. One is good if they don’t harm others, or if their behavior is driven by the will to act toward a greater good. These are things we can quite generally observe in the archetypes of good people, so that’s what we measure it with. But those definitions fall short of an ideal. More often than not, we end up describing someone as ‘good’ even if they don’t have a positive impact – and might even have a negative one.

Take the example of a good partner. Haven’t we all heard someone described as a good partner just because they don’t cheat, or don’t hit, or because they occasionally buy flowers? All three things are important, but is that the bar? Or worse: haven’t we all heard of people who might have fallen short of even the most basic requisites of being a trustworthy partner, yet are excused because “they mean well, they just…”? Forgiveness should be a given, but thinking someone’s intention was good does not mean we should tolerate certain behaviors or outcomes.

What we do in these cases is define good by the absence of bad (either bad behavior or bad intention). But we leave a lot of undeserving middle ground up for grabs. First, because there is no value in not being bad if one doesn’t have the ability for it. It’s like praising sharks because they’re not eating birds. Second, because intention might be misplaced. I believe in placing some value on the nature of an individual, but it can’t justify hurtful actions.

And precisely because of this way of qualifying goodness, the word is often used when a more fitting description would be passive behavior.

One classical example of why these definitions are not enough is Dostoyevsky’s Prince Lev Myshkin. And with him, we see that the problem is not necessarily the inoffensive and well-intentioned person, but the world around him. It’s an exploration of how the most well-placed purity might never find a home in our world.

The Prince is, supposedly, an entirely positive character, with an absolutely beautiful nature. He’s compassionate, sincere, friendly. This is something new for everyone who meets him during the novel: they are equally astonished, drawn to it, and sometimes even frustrated. The Idiot, he is called. Not necessarily because of his lack of intellect, but because he seems to believe in a world in which human beings are something that they are not.

You might not want to read the next sentence if you haven’t read the book, as spoilers follow. But all his goodness does not prevent the tragic ending: Aglaya, broken and disillusioned. Nastasya, dead. Rogozhin, imprisoned. The Prince, back in the sanatorium.

What is all the Prince’s goodness worth if he’s not able to prevent the worst possible ending – not even for himself? There are people who can’t be saved, and Nastasya was probably one of them. But should this excuse someone whose passivity caused the definite downfall of the souls around him? Dostoyevsky was right in pointing out that a completely good soul would be lost in this world, but it leaves the reader empty of a clear alternative.

What that alternative could’ve been is up to Dostoyevsky’s reader to figure out, but it’s clear that it would have implied some difficulty, some confrontation, earlier on. Good requires the knowledge and the possibility of bad, and an active decision against it. Good is the active decision to aim at a higher ideal that will benefit the broader good. And, usually, that will imply raising the bar of what’s considered good. For oneself, and for those around.

In the broadest sense, good benefits humanity. If someone is forcefully moving the needle in that direction, they are doing good. Now, this is where centuries of philosophy come into play: how much evil can good justify? What really benefits humanity? Which values have a higher priority?

There are no universal answers to these questions. The right answers will depend on time and context. But there are answers we can categorize as morally preferable. A good person is one who is on a quest to answer these rightly, who forces themselves to hold to these standards, even if that puts them in constant confrontation with their own capacity for passivity, idiocy, or evil.

This classification seems close to someone well-intentioned. But it has a crucial element to it: where ‘well-intentioned’ is just the hope that good will happen, the good person acts decisively toward that goal. So it’s not that good people are not well-intentioned, but that they recognize something more than intention is necessary.

To be good, then, is more than anything not a behavior, but a commitment. A commitment to take on the responsibility of figuring out what the best possible outcome is for everyone, and to act toward that.