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Sources of the Good (The Constitutive Good)

One further parameter is important to Taylor’s quest for a sound moral ontology–the constitutive good (C. Taylor, 1989, 91-107). The moral framework operates at two levels. At one level, there are the general life goods, those that are valued by the individual self. The life goods are things that make life worth living or the virtues they advocate: such as justice, reason, piety, courage, freedom, moderation, respect. They are features of human life that possess intrinsic worth. At a motivational level, Taylor reveals the vital category of the constitutive good. This good he also calls the moral source. With this emphasis, Taylor wants to recover the category of moral motivation for the self along with the other categories of the good. The constitutive good can be (but not necessarily) transcendent of the self. This source of inspiration and motivation for the good can be outside the self, or higher than the self. Moral sources provide the inspiration or motivation to live in line with life goods. This is especially the case for the dominant hypergood. Taylor (C. Taylor, 1989, 516) writes concerning this phenomenon, “High standards need strong sources.” The moral source empowers the individual self to realize the hypergood in moral life, at the level of both inspiration and praxis. It is also an important source of the self and its agency, or ability to both embrace and do the good. The constitutive good empowers/animates the moral agent and the moral horizon of that agent. It gives to the life goods their quality of goodness (C. Taylor, 1989, 93, 122). Many individuals are not consciously aware of this motivating good, but all of us seek for such inspiration. We do not flourish in the absence of such a source. 

Constitutive Good refers to that which is essential to the particular nature or character of something; it has sustaining, energizing and nurturing power (C. Taylor, 1989, 264); it is the type of good that provides enabling conditions for the realization of strong qualifications in one’s life. Therefore, one’s relationship to such a good is vital to building one’s moral capacity. Knowing such a good also means loving it, wanting to act in accord with it (C. Taylor, 1989, 533-4), growing toward it. Crucial to the position of the constitutive good is that it has independence of the self. To clarify this category, Taylor wrote in an e-mail to me: 

“A constitutive good is a term I used for what I also called moral sources, something the recognition of which can make you stronger or more focused in seeking or doing the good. It’s a matter of motivation, and not just definition of your moral position.” 

This is a vital concept because without the empowerment of the constitutive good, the pursuit of the hypergood could be perceived to be a tremendous burden, even oppressive. Michel Foucault carried a fear of hypergoods for this reason. The source offers hope for benefits of embracing the good, and allowing the hypergood to rule in one’s life. One concludes that it also builds into one’s meaning structure. Taylor wants to broaden the definition of morality to include questions of what one should admire and love. “The constitutive good does more than just define the content of the moral theory. Love of it is what empowers us to be good.” (C. Taylor, 1989, 93). 

Examples of the Constitutive Good A constitutive good tells a person what it is about a human being (sets the value of her existence) that makes her worthy of non-discriminating care and respect. Romantics would consider their source of the good to be in nature: Things are good because they are natural to human beings. Nature inspires and finds a resonance with the self. Theists would take God as a divine, transcendent source of the good: The individual moral agent is inspired to mediate God’s goodness to society, and to take other humans as worthy of respect because they are made in God’s image. Post-Romantics like Foucault would see the self, in itself, as the major source of the good: The autonomous individual makes things good by choice (subjective valuation) or positing and promoting a value (projectivism). A certain value such as creativity, autonomy or style is counted worthy because it is freely chosen, posited, and valorized by Foucault (following Nietzsche) and his schema of the moral self, not because it’s own inherent worth of goodness. Foucault substitutes the category of telos for constitutive good within his four fold schema. It is the desired and imagined ethos, style of life or mode of being (vision of life as a work of art). This is what motivates and inspires the self rather than a source of inspiration from outside the individual self. 

Sources of the good (spiritual sources), according to Taylor, tend to be embedded in a particular culture and function for moral agents of that culture during a certain historical moment or era. Key to his argument is the insight that there have been major shifts in what people take to be the inspirational sources of the good down through the centuries. Modernization, in particular, involves a massive cultural shift with the replacement of one set of views about the self, nature and the good with another. The constitutive good is located differently, and therefore one’s relationship with this good can vary from one era to another. According to Taylor, sources tend to vary from a. those solely external to the self, to b. those both internal and external, to c. those totally internal. As Taylor notes, at one time, the good was wholly external to the self as it was perceived in Plato’s moral ontology of the Forms. Taylor notes the big transition in moral sources in the last four centuries: 

Moving from an epoch in which people could find it plausible to see the order of the cosmos as a moral source, to one in which a very common view presents us a universe which is very neutral, and finds the moral sources in human capacities. (C. Taylor, 1994, 215) 

He takes Plato as his representative of the first, the ontic logos: “The cosmos, ordered by the good, set standards of goodness for human beings, and is properly the object of moral awe and admiration, inspiring us to act rightly.” (C. Taylor, 1994, 215). This is, however, an important distinction: Taylor himself is a strong realist, but not a neo-Platonist: that is, the view that the good is part of the metaphysical structure of the world. Platonic moral realism has been discredited because it leans too heavily on the idea of an ontic logos, a meaningful order. But nor is Taylor, on the other hand, a radical subjectivist. His view of realism lies somewhere between the Romantic subjectivist Rilke, and the Platonic objectivist. He wants to champion both the subjective and objective dimensions of the moral individual, and maintain that there are sources outside and inside the self. Taylor (C. Taylor, 1989, 127-143) notes that Augustine first articulated the whole idea of a reflexivity of self. In this case, the constitutive good is both internal and external, and the relationship is importantly one of both reaching inside and reaching out— from within to gain access to what lies beyond the self in God. In Foucault’s case, as with many other late moderns, the constitutive good is reduced to one that is internal to the self: Here, the source of the good and the self is taken as inside the self and its capacities—revealed through artistic self-expression and self-shaping in a radically reflexive relationship with oneself. Taylor’s great concern about the constitution of the moral self is the loss of outside-the-self moral sources (C. Taylor, 1994, 216). It puts a heavy burden on the individual to inspire himself and decide the value of everything. He considers that the exclusion of outside sources is quite costly (making a deprivation) to the moral self and issues in the draining of moral culture. 

On reflection, why is the constitutive good important? For Taylor, it is vital that one articulate, or make explicit, the constitutive good, in order to understand from where this inspiration or moral empowerment comes. It can also reveal/expose the less honourable or corrupt sources of a certain moral ontology, to expose false or less authentic motivations. Taylor challenges that the dedicated silence of many modern moral outlooks (including that of Foucault) about such external sources of the good prevents these outlooks from fully understanding themselves. They are in effect cut off from their own history. Taylor counts it as a vital task to put moral sources back on the philosophical agenda. It has practical consequences for moral agents. If one does not reflect on one’s moral sources, one is in danger of losing contact with them altogether. This can cause a breakdown/implosion in cultural vision. One is also in danger of losing the life goods which they both ground and empower. Agency must be empowered. Taylor argues for an independent constitutive good that resources the self. Foucault, on the other hand, sees the sources located within the self alone. In his case, sources of the self are merely human constructions, based on radical self-interest. Therefore, they should not have imputed to them too high a worth. 

Thus, there seems to be in Foucault the strong potential of a slide toward celebration of one’s own creative powers and the reduction of sources of the good to one’s individual creative imagination. From Taylor’s perspective, this is a problem, a loss (read deficit) of a significant dimension in moral self-constitution. Sources of the self are severely limited in the quest for self-sufficiency and freedom of action. Taylor gives an example of the resulting problems.

People agree surprisingly well, across great differences of theological and metaphysical belief, about the demands of justice and benevolence, and their importance.… The issue is what sources can support our far-reaching moral commitments to benevolence and justice. (C. Taylor, 1989, 515) 

This is his famous dilemma of modernity—coping with a strong hypergood without strong sources—a dilemma that often leads to cynicism. Taylor, over against Foucault, is not suggesting that one give up on these high ideals for justice, benevolence, and care for the other. Foucault seems to fear that the demands of benevolence can exact a high cost in self-care and self-fulfilment, which may in the end require a payment of either self-negation, or even self-destruction (in his view). Taylor does recognize the cost in the general truth that, 

The highest spiritual ideals and aspirations also threaten to lay the most crushing burdens on humankind. The great spiritual visions [and ideologies] of human history have also been poisoned chalices, the causes of untold misery and even savagery. (C. Taylor, 1989, 516) 

Chantal Delsol (Icarus Fallen) also writes about this sort of fear if the good in the history of twentieth century European wars. Ideologies initially captured people’s imagination, but they led to terrible devastation and death camps. This is especially true of certain Marxist and Fascist political ideologies that reigned in various decades of the twentieth century. Here’s her statement on meaning/spirituality:

To have meaning is to stand for something other than oneself, to establish a link with a value, an idea, an ideal beyond oneself. Life has meaning, for example, for those who spend their lives in search of a cure for a disease, or in the struggle against injustice, or just to show every day that society can be more than a jungle. The link one establishes with this value or idea confers a higher value on life…. A life that has meaning recognizes certain references…. In other words, it is paradoxically worth something only to the extent that it admits itself not to be of supreme value, by recognizing what is worth more than itself, by its ability to organize itself around something else. Everyone will admit that existence is at once both finite and deficient. We consider society to be mediocre, love insufficient, a lifespan too narrow. The person whose life has meaning is the one who, instead of remaining  complacently in the midst of his regrets, decides to strive for perfection, however imperfectly, to express the absolute, even through his own deficiencies, to seek eternity, even if only temporarily. If he spends his life making peace in society or rendering justice to victims, he is effectively pointing, even if it is with a trembling finger, to the existence of peace and justice as such…. By pursuing referents, he points to them. He awkwardly expresses these impalpable, immaterial figures of hope or expectancy…. Individual existence, when it means something, points to its referent through its day-to-day actions and behaviours, the sacrifices it accepts and the risks it dares to take…. The seeker moves forward, all the while wondering, “What is worth serving?” Individual existence structures itself through the call for meaning. Existence is shaped by questions and expectations. (C. Delsol, Icarus Fallen, 4-5)

Morality as benevolence and responsibility for the other can breed self-condemnation for those who feel its import and yet fall short of its ideals. This can challenge the impulses to self-contentment or harmony within oneself. Taylor (C. Taylor, 1989, 516) understands, along with Foucault, some other negative results of an ethic of benevolence without proper moral sources: a. A threatened sense of unworthiness can lead to projection of evil onto the other as happens in racism and bigotry, or b. Some individuals try to recover meaning through political extremisms. 

So Taylor, in dialogue with Foucault, would agree that high ideals can lead to destructive ends, and might do so without a robust constitutive good, but he disagrees that this is the only possible outcome. Not all humanisms are destructive. He believes that it is possible to move towards justice and a better social order, towards just relations, just institutions, and even constitutions. He sees the potential of the good for positive results in the individual and communal realm, especially as the proper sources of such good is realized from outside the self. The pursuit of justice and benevolence, for instance, often does require self-sacrifice, but this self-sacrifice can benefit both the giver and the recipient as in a good marriage or family, and contribute to mutual communal benefits, enhance personal freedom, and inspire others to pursue such noble ends. Thus, the issue of moral sources is vital to this debate on the qualities of freedom of the will, as Taylor emphasizes. Freedom’s motivation to execute responsible behaviour requires the good.

Application of Moral Sources

Transcendent divine goodness is present and accessible in the human sphere through the incarnation of Jesus who is called the Christ. Transcendence does not therefore mean aloofness and indifference, or a burdensome or unreachable standard of perfection, but rather a creative, fruitful engagement with the world, society and its institutions. Transcendent divine goodness takes on an historical and christological determination in order to impact the human moral world. By reading the moral life through the life of Christ, one cannot espouse a minimalist and juridical conception of the moral life that merely acts on what is permitted and forbidden. We find a moral life that makes sense in the light of a Christ who is full of goodness, who incarnates divine, infinite goodness in human flesh, and articulates it authentically, historically, and culturally. D. Steven Long highlights to the moral normativity of the life of Jesus.

In Christian theology, Jesus reveals to us not only who God is but also what it means to be truly human. This true humanity is not something we achieve on our own; it comes to us as a gift.… The reception of this gift contains an ineliminable element of mystery that will always require faith. Jesus in his life, teaching, death and resurrection and ongoing presence in the church and through the Holy Spirit … orders us towards God. He directs our passions and desires towards that which can finally fulfil them and bring us happiness … [and] reveal to us what it means to be human. (D. S. Long, 2001, 106-7) 

This immanence offers the option of life of the self, lived not autonomously but in cooperation with divine wisdom and goodness. In the incarnation of Jesus Christ, goodness is made accessible, personal and real. It is not left as an abstract unattainable ideal, or a wholly other reality alone. It is transcendent goodness expressed in our immanent reality. Within this plausibility structure, the roots for the ethical life, the transcendent condition for this life, lie in God, not in a mythological ontology of freedom (Foucault). Jesus and his followers, the church, are the dynamic unity between the transcendent/eternal and the temporal, the absolute and the contingent. The relational goodness of God is discovered not by means of a mere abstract speculation but in human lives oriented toward God, subjectivity engaged and inspired by the needs of the human other, as well as by the goodness of God. Therefore, the first human life to consider for this position of hope is the life of Jesus, who found his moral sources in God, his Father. He promised the same potential goodness (righteousness) to his disciples through the work of the Holy Spirit. This trinitarian goodness is a gift, and profoundly it is the gift of Jesus Christ. He is God’s goodness embodied, embedded in human culture, sourced in God’s own self. The human self, in this case, is constituted by its engagement with the divine self in the process of discovering a spiritual and moral epiphany. This is an encounter which provides transformation and a new vision for the world. The focus is on agape love not on power. One does have a relationship with one’s own self, but one can also have a relationship with a transcendent self who is goodness, love in communion (The Christian Trinity).

There is a second aspect of incarnation, beyond Jesus’ particular presence on earth. It is God the Son’s presence in his church. The church offers an historical and cultural presence, performance and embodiment of God’s goodness, socially locating divine goodness in a human community and narrative. Schwöbel (1992, 76) notes that divine goodness, a communion of love in itself, “finds its social form in the community of believers as the reconstituted form of life of created and redeemed sociality.” (D.W. Hardy, 2001, 75) underlines that the task of the church is to face into “the irreducible density of the goodness that is God in human society” and elsewhere he (D. W. Hardy, 1996, 202) identifies “the existence of social being in humanity (the social transcendental), and the movement of social being through the social dynamic, as due to the presence of divine sociality and hence the trinitarian presence of God.”  

Thereby, one’s own self-constitution is seen to involve the flourishing of the other, the honouring of the other, as well as receiving from the other in mutuality, in a communion of love. The other changes in significance, from a categorical threat (a potential dominator in the world of will to power and disciplinary practices) in Foucault’s ethics, to an esteemed opportunity of mutuality. The other is highly valued as an end in herself. The self, in this case, discovers and constructs itself within community, with a moral inclusiveness that involves the pursuit of a communion of love, rather than a pursuit of radical autonomy. However fragile or imperfect this incarnation of trinitarian goodness in Christian community, it is no less profound for the transformation of the self according to a strong transcendence of depth. Human creatures are called upward morally and spiritually to image and give witness to the dynamic being and activity of the triune God. This imaging transforms the moral vision of the self in a dynamic way, and enhances human possibilities for action towards the good of the other and the good of society.

That most poignant image of hope, the Kingdom of God, expresses the relation of free divine love and loving human freedom together in depicting the ultimate purpose of God’s action as the perfected community of love with his creation. (C. Schwöbel, 1995, 80) 

This entails a transcendent moral turn for the self, beyond fear of domination and mutual competition (agonisme) or pursuit of self-indulgence (an anti-humanist stance), to a pro-human, pro-existence, self-giving love and mutual support. It is important to realize that raw self-construction is called into question in this blog series. It begs the question of human givenness and of the discovery of self in community. It is not the economy of a naked, free human will choosing to follow a moral law or choosing to design self autonomously. Goodness is no mere achievement of the human will; it is truly a mysterious gift of God. 

Therefore, Wealth, Power, Pleasure, and Honour cannot be the key goals for our lives. Bishop Robert Barron says it well on YouTube: “Your Life is not About You.”

Dr. Gordon E. Carkner, author, blogger, meta-educator with UBC postgraduate students

See also https://ubcgcu.org/2015/03/22/is-agape-love-a-source-of-the-good/

Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, Harvard University Press.

Taylor, C. (1994). Charles Taylor Replies. In J. Tully (Ed.) Philosophy in an Age of Pluralism: The philosophy of Charles Taylor in question (pp. 213-57). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Long, D.S. (2001). The Goodness of God. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press. 

Schwöbel, C. (1992). God’s Goodness and Human Morality. In C. Schwöbel, God: Action and revelation (pp. 63-82). Kampen, Holland: Pharos. 

Schwöbel, C. (1995). Imago Libertatis: Human and Divine Freedom. In C. Gunton (Ed.) God & Freedom: Essays in historical and systematic theology (pp. 57-81). Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 

Sources of Identity & Meaning: https://wordpress.com/post/ubcgcu.org/10463

YouTube Video, Rethinking Identity Through the Lens of Incarnation: https://youtu.be/hRpC9f0J6WM

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