Just Thomism: Belief in its proper sense

A formulation of the Incommensurability Thesis

From Morality and the Human Goods, by Alfonso Gómez-Lobo:

Incommensurability and Hierarchy of Goods

The good life is a conceptual ideal (there is nothing of basic value excluded from it), but our lives are far from perfect. Yet we can lead better or worse lives, depending fundamentally on our choices. Is there a fixed hierarchy of goods such that if A is higher than B, and if we always choose A, then our lives will be better than if we choose B? As far as I know, none of the philosophical efforts to set up a fixed hierarchy of basic goods has been successful. Aristotle, for example, argues that excellence in the exercise of theoretical knowledge is the main ingredient in the best life, but it also is clear that in many particular circumstances exclusive pursuit of theoretical knowledge--at the cost, say, of neglecting or harming friends, family and one's communities--is foolish and wrong. Someone who does that surely is not a good person in the Aristotelian sense of being a virtuous or excellent man.

We often have to choose among competing goods. What we do in such cases is engage in broad prudential comparisons about what goods are more important in general as well as in particular circumstances. It is less important to lose one's job than to lose one's life, but in a given case keeping a risky job to support one's family could be the prudent thing to do.

Prudential weighing of goods according to their importance is quite different, however, from the model of quantitative calculation of goods. Basic goods cannot be reduced to units that it would then make sense to maximize. Are there more units of friendship in having fifty relatively distant friends than in having a few close friends? How many units of work are balanced by how many units of inner harmony? I trust you will agree that the quantitative approach (which is perfectly clear--e.g., for the maximization of yearly profits of a manufacturing company) hardly makes sense for basic human goods.

Even if one grants the Aristotelian doctrine that theoretical knowledge should be valued highly, one can still see that a "lower" good (by comparison) may be the good worth pursuing. In light of my talents (or lack thereof), and given what might follow from a purely theoretical pursuit (I may not find a job as a pure theoretician!), it would be best for me to choose a less glamorous profession.

At times it might seem as if the grounding good--life itself--shoudl always take precedence over everything else. Indeed, it is so basic that in most cases it is clear that aiming at other goods at the cost of life would be irrational. Yet there may be circumstances inw hich not even life should be preserved at all costs. It may be rational to give up one's life (which is not the same as taking one's life) so that others may live.

No human good is absolute in the sense that, regardless of circumstances, its pursuit and protection should always and everywhere take precedence over other basic goods. There is no overriding good. Because the order of precedence is not fixed and therefore is far from being obvious to human agents before they face particular choices, we are well advised to develop certain strategies for the pursuit of the human goods.

But does not God take precedence over everything else? Is He not an 'absolute' good in that way? Could the martyrs protect both their lives and the love of God? It seems not.

iirc, this problem with the New Natural Law Theory was brought to the fore when Germain Grisez argued that God could not be the object of human happiness--his paper, and various responses to it, were published in volume 46 of The American Journal of Jurisprudence. Can it be shown that his position is heretical? Or at least contrary to sound reason? (Can one show that God is not only the ultimate end for all creation, but also the object of love as well? I would think so.)