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The Hypergood: a Moral Culture Driver

I continue, with constructive intent, my resistance (agonisme) against the idea that freedom can be reduced to a mere matter of the will alone: naked individual choice. Building on the concept of moral horizon in the previous post, I look inside that frame to examine the active ingredients. Within the moral horizon, according to philosopher Charles Taylor, the domain of the moral includes many different goods that cry for one’s attention. This can be frustrating and confusing; there is often competition and even conflict between these goods, especially in society at large, but also within an individual. Taylor wants to strongly affirm these goods for the self, in their plurality. But he does not want to stifle or lose their full moral and maturity potential just because they come into conflict. He believes that the tensions between moral goods are a healthy sign, and thus he does not want to resolve these tensions in any facile way: by allowing, for example, one good to devour, repress, or eliminate the rest. This actually does happen in various schools of moral thought. He believes that within the framework, one good—the hypergood—tends to surpass in value and organize the others in some priority. This is a very significant factor in understanding the dynamics within one’s moral framework. 

The potential resolution of this dilemma of the plurality of goods and the tension between goods comes by way of a highest good among the strongly-valued goods. Within the moral framework, this is called the hypergood (C. Taylor, 1989, 63-73, 100-102, 104-106): “Let me call higher-order goods of this kind ‘hypergoods’, i.e. goods which are incomparably more important than the others, but provide the standpoint from which these [other goods] must be weighed, judged, decided about.” (C. Taylor, 1989, 63) The hypergood has hierarchical priority and dominance; it holds a significant shaping power within the moral framework. It is the good of which the individual is naturally most conscious, their greatest passion, a good that rests at core identity. It is the driver of one’s desires, sense of self, and destiny.

Why is this Diversity of Goods important to Taylor? He tries to explain in his tome Sources of the Self with a chapter entitled ‘The Conflicts of Modernity’ (C. Taylor, 1989, 495-521), a broad reflection on the diversity of goods and the conflicts of the good among the major movements within modernity. Taylor is quite convinced that there exists a diversity of goods for which a valid claim can be made; he means that they have a legitimate claim on the self. Ethics, in his view, ought not be reduced to the choice of just one good or principle, such as happiness, efficiency, or aesthetic-freedom (Foucault) to the exclusion of all others. This kind of choice is too simplistic and narrow, and it is Taylor’s conviction that the denial of certain goods or families of goods has led to serious imbalance (one-sidedness or even corruption) within Western moral philosophy. This has eventually led to negative consequences for how people live together in the world and can divide people in dangerous ways, even leading to violence or the cancelling of someone’s human rights. He cautions against a selective denial or exclusion of certain goods. Taylor wants to revive these goods in moral currency to “uncover buried goods through rearticulation—and thereby to make these sources again that empower” (C. Taylor, 1989, 520). He wants to affirm the complexity of multiple moral goods in his type of critical moral realism. This makes life interesting.

Taylor exposes an important error of thought: 

What leads to a wrong answer must be a false principle. [This outlook] is quick to jump to the conclusion that whatever has generated bad action must be vicious…. What it loses from sight is that there may be genuine dilemmas here, that following one good to the end may be catastrophic, not because it isn’t good, but because there are others that cannot be sacrificed without evil. (C. Taylor, 1989, 503) 

This is an important nuance. Extreme repudiations and denials of the good are not just intellectual errors; they are also “self-stultifying, assuming that a particular good can empower one to positive action” (C. Taylor, 1989, 504). Crucially, it is the affirmation of the tension between these goods that keeps an ethical theory and praxis in healthy balance. The tensions are not beyond resolution, but resolution requires the recognition of the need for a hierarchy of the goods. Taylor (C. Taylor, 1989, 503-507 & 514) promotes an important inclusive, anti-reductionist stance on the good. This is important background information in order to explain the key function of the hypergood. 

A good example of the problem is the current emphasis on self-fulfilment or self-realization (my good). A society of self-fulfillers, whose affiliations are more and more seen as tentative, revocable, and mobile, cannot sustain a strong identification with community of any sort. This leads to social fragmentation.

Our normal understanding of self-realization presupposes that some things are important beyond the self, that there are some goods or purposes the furthering of which have significance for us and hence which can provide the significance of fulfilling life needs…. A totally and fully consistent subjectivism would tend toward emptiness: nothing would count as fulfilment in a world in which literally nothing was important but self-fulfilment. (C. Taylor, 1989, 507) 

Orchestration of Various Goods Relationship to a good comes with a cost: There are times when one good has to be sacrificed for another, especially a lower for a higher. Taylor strongly claims that a conflict between goods should not entail or require the conclusion that one must refute or cancel out other important goods, nor to refute the general validity of goods The hypergood effectively orchestrates the arrangement of hierarchy among the goods, as it interprets their priority and their moral play. It can raise or lower their priority, promote or demote them, or even eliminate certain goods from moral play altogether. We should pay close attention to this moral driver in individuals and groups. It is vital that the individual self be very conscious of, and well-positioned with respect to this particular good. This pre-eminent good grounds and directs one’s overall moral beliefs, goals, and aspirations. It works to define and give important shape to one’s entire moral framework.

Here are some examples of the hypergood (C. Taylor, 1989, 65) given by Taylor: happiness, equal respect, universal justice, divine will, self-respect, and self-fulfilment. There can also be conflict between these hypergoods as there are between persons who hold them close to their heart. There tends to be a conflict among the three major hypergoods in Western culture: (a) universal justice and reduction of human suffering (concern for the victim), (b) self-determining freedom/aesthetic-freedom, and (c) the affirmation of everyday life or equal respect. More could be said about this later.

This hypergood has a major influence on how one articulates a particular moral horizon, the hierarchy of life goods and how one is generally oriented in moral life. The hypergood is independent, and shapes the desires and choices of the self. It is core to one’s very identity. It is not merely an ideal or the mere object of a high admiration or contemplation (a poetic entity). The hypergood can be quite demanding, and often asks for great personal sacrifice: for example, a hypergood oriented to preserve and protect nature could require a person lay down their body in front of logging trucks and risk arrest to save old growth forests.

What is the Key Role of the Hypergood? What is one’s possible relationship to this good? How does it impact one’s identity? According to Taylor, a self with the requisite depth and complexity to have an identity (a thick self), must be defined in terms of such a good, and is interwoven with it. One’s whole identity is essentially defined by one’s orientation to such a hypergood; it is deeply personal and held as sacred. Taylor (C. Taylor, 1989, 63) notes that, “It is orientation to this which comes closest to defining my identity, and therefore my direction to this good is of unique importance to me.” It is also a core ideal at the centre of one’s sense of calling. It provides the point against which an individual measures her trajectory in life.

Finally, the hypergood is something which one grows towards and something that moves and motivates the individual self deeply–it provides emotional and spiritual infrastructure, one could say. Taylor (C. Taylor, 1989, 73) stresses that, “Our acceptance of any hypergood is connected in a complex way with our being moved by it.” The hypergood has a major impact on one’s moral stance in life. His strong claim is that this is not only a phenomenological account of some selves, but an exploration of the very limits of the conceivable in the reflective human life, more like an anthropological given.

To know who I am is a species of knowing where I stand. My identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or horizon within which I try to decide from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done or what I endorse or oppose … It is the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stand.… It is to be oriented in moral space, a space in which questions arise about what is good or bad, what is worth doing and what not, what has meaning and importance for you and what is trivial and secondary. (C. Taylor 1989, 27, 28)

What applies to the moral horizon applies to the hypergood. Taylor provocatively suggests that the hypergood that shapes the moral self could include the fulfilment of one’s duties and obligations (responsibility) to others. “Responsibility for the Other transports the self beyond the sphere of self-interest. Other-responsibility could also be seen as the greatest form of self-realization, featuring as the highest vocation of human subjectivity” (C. Taylor, 1989, 112). As a hypergood, Other-responsibility is integrated into the structure of selfhood without compromising the exteriority of the claims of the Other. Eventually, he provocatively posits the possibility that agape love could be such a hypergood to empower the moral self and bring unity amidst plurality.

Application in the Middle East Recently I met the Dean of Nazarene Evangelical College, Yohanna Katanacho. He is a Langham Trust scholar, a Palestinian-Israeli-Christian. His stories of the Middle East bring tears to your eyes. So many thousands are killed, maimed, homeless and starving, eating out of tin cans. The church used to thrive in Gaza but now is only 800 persons. Some $65 Billion USA aid has been given to Israel for weapons of destruction. The church in the West Bank and Israel proper is poor and hurting from all the mayhem, restrictions, and hate speech. The Western/Global church has tragically abandoned the church in this area  overall. Christian Zionism in America and Canada confuses so many people about the real situation on the ground and causes more suffering. Yohanna is a very humble and deep Christian believer. He is asking for our understanding and our help.

Yohanna has a vision/frame for Missional Justice: His hypergood involves the pursuit of justice with righteous/honest/good motives, bringing people together, offering forgiveness, loving the enemy, building bridges of reconciliation. He articulates agape love as a fresh worldview, a new culture, a new civilization needed among the various factions in the Middle East: Palestinian, Jew, and Christian. He sees a longterm vision of building such a new culture (not of violence and hate, but mercy and love). If ever there was a place where love and the moral good needs to be active and relevant today, it is in the land where the Palestinian Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, chose his first disciples, healed the sick, and brought the nations together. He preached a message of peace, honesty, humility, and social healing. Jesus clears a highway through the jungle of modern life that draws us towards a full humanization (common flourishing). People have found stability and wisdom by being grounded in him.

Dr. Gordon E. Carkner, PhD University of Wales, Meta-Educator with postgraduate students and faculty, University of British Columbia, Author, Blogger, YouTube Webinar Producer.

Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 

Carkner, G. (2024). Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture: Grounding our Identity in Christ. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishing.

p.s  The Crisis of Affirmation: Philosopher Charles Taylor, later in The Sources of the Self, speaks of the twin horns of a dilemma that we face in Western culture, between self-hatred and spiritual lobotomy. If we believe in moral norms/standards of conduct, we may feel depressed that we cannot seem to live up to even our own weak standards–this leads to guilt, shame and self-loathing. We face the moral gap between our ideals and our personal moral capacity. On the other hand, we can do serious self-damage by cynically giving up on morality altogether–a spiritual lobotomy that leads to cynicism and ultimately nihilism (a living death). Taylor wisely claims that morality, spirituality and identity are inter-twined. That will become more and more clear through this series. Nihilism, the loss of meaning (Jean Paul Sartre’s empty bubble on the sea of nothingness), is not healthy for anyone. It constitutes an enormous emotional black hole. How can we love the world and love ourselves in the midst of the world’s (and our own) brokenness and imperfections? If there is no appeal to grace within this dilemma, we are painfully, existentially stuck. This is a terrifying fate indeed. Perhaps a transcendent turn to agape love offers a way out, suggests Taylor.