Thursday night.

Jack and Mick have settled into their chairs in Doc’s office.

MICK: I’ve been trying to make sense of my reaction to the view you attributed to Augustine. As I indicated, I think there must be a way to establish that the good isn’t unchanging . The notion of immutability really doesn’t sit well with me.

JACK: On the basis of what you said last night, it seemed like you wanted to say it is somehow incoherent.

MICK: Yes, that was my initial inclination, but I’m having difficulty articulating why or in what sense. I tried to think of other incoherent concepts that would be analogous since I thought that might help me think about this topic.

DOC: That’s a good strategy.

MICK: Maybe, except I couldn’t think of an example! Or at least not one that was analogous.

JACK: Hmm. Well, sharing your thought process and where you were getting stuck might help us think along with you.

DOC: I agree. What were some other examples you came up with of confused or incoherent concepts, even if they ultimately didn’t help?

MICK: Well, I think the most obvious examples are things like “circular squares” or “immaterial bodies.”

DOC: Okay. The first is obvious: a figure can’t be both a square and exhibit circularity so that’s clearly an incoherent idea. But is an immaterial body really incoherent in the same way?

MICK: Well sure! A body is a thing that takes up space—it’s a three-dimensional object—and the matter is just whatever stuff a body is composed of which causes it to take up space. So the idea of a body that lacks matter is incoherent.

DOC: Hmm. Something about that doesn’t seem quite right to me. Can’t we conceive of a body that doesn’t have any constitutive matter?

MICK: Well, what I’m suggesting is that we can’t!

DOC: What about ghosts? Even if we don’t think they actually exist, we can conceive of them. They’re like a unicorn or Pegasus in that sense. I don’t think Pegasus actually exists or ever did, but I know what the concept of Pegasus is.

JACK: I think I’m with Mick on this one, Doc. The reason we can conceive of a unicorn or Pegasus is that we can imagine a horse having different body parts, either a horn or wings.

DOC: And we can do the same thing with respect to bodies: we can conceive of a person as lacking a body or leaving their body behind. Every ghost story hinges on the fact that we can imagine this possibility. No one could make a movie featuring a circular square, but they could, and certainly do, make movies about ghosts. Wouldn’t you grant that there are stories about ghosts just like there’s a story or legend about Pegasus?

MICK: That’s the issue! I don’t think I am willing to grant that. People call certain stories “ghost ” stories, but I don’t think the idea is coherent in the same way the idea of a winged horse is.

JACK: Ah, I think we can reveal where you two are disagreeing if we first get clear on what Doc means by “ghost.”

Mick smiles and dramatically folds her arms in satisfaction as she leans towards Doc. Jokingly—

MICK: That’s right, mister! You need to explain what you mean!

She relaxes back into her chair.

But first you guys have to promise me that we’ll get back to immutability. I don’t want to get sidetracked too much!

DOC: Absolutely. I don’t want us to either.

JACK: Agreed, and I suspect this will actually help us quite a bit. So—

He turns to give his full attention to Doc and crosses his legs.

Tell us, my friend, what do you mean by a “ghost”?

DOC: Well, the idea of a ghost is of a disembodied soul. We can use our imagination to come up with this idea really easily. In the case of Pegasus, we use our imagination to put together the idea of horse and the idea of wings. In the case of a ghost, we imagine a soul that leaves or escapes the body. It’s almost like the body is a vehicle and the soul “steps” out of it.

MICK: Ah, see! You think you’ve made your case, but you’ve actually just revealed the problem!

DOC: Oh? Do tell!

MICK: You said earlier that you could imagine an immaterial body, but now you’re asking us to imagine a bodiless soul!

DOC: Oh, damn! You’re right!

He laughs and then bites his lip as he contemplates his options.

JACK: I think those two things are easily confused, but Mick’s right. They are distinct.

DOC: Yes, I have to admit I was conflating those two things.

MICK: Let’s not get into whether the idea of a bodiless soul is possible—at least not right now! But I think I can now explain why the concept of an immaterial body is incoherent. Basically, it is a way of trying to talk about a bodiless body.

DOC: Hmm. Indeed. You’re absolutely right, and that is clearly incoherent.

JACK: I’ll add one proviso: “immaterial body” is only incoherent on the assumption that body means a spatiotemporal entity, which is how Mick was using it. If there’s a different sense in which “body” can be used, the notion of an immaterial body might not be incoherent.

MICK: I thought you were with me, Jack!

JACK: Haha, I am! I’m just being careful.

Mick gives him an exaggerated side-eye.

MICK: We shall see. I suspect you’ve got something brewing in that head of yours.

She chuckles and then takes a deep breath, running her hand through her hair.

MICK: Okay, so last night when I was thinking this through, the analogy to the concept of an immaterial body wasn’t helping me, but now I think it is. If the idea of an immutable good is incoherent in a similar way, it must be that the property expressed by the adjective can’t be coherently attributed to the subject expressed by the noun.

DOC: Right, though there are other ways in which a concept can be incoherent.

MICK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. (Waves her hand dismissively.) Don’t get me off track!

Doc smiles and gestures for her to proceed.

MICK: Here’s my first stab at it: fundamentally, anything that is good is an activity—the idea of something being, quote-unquote, the good is the idea of it being the best activity. So, the idea of an immutable or unchanging good is incoherent. It is the impossible idea of an inactive activity.

Doc quickly stands up and dramatically bends over, acting as if he’s picking something up from the floor. Mick looks baffled and then chuckles.

MICK: What the hell are you doing?

DOC: Oh, sorry, you just blew my mind, so I’m picking up the pieces.

Jack slaps his knee.

JACK: Haha, yes, that is really well put, Mick!

She leans back and smiles.

MICK: I can’t deny feeling satisfied, but surely you guys will put my argument through the wringer.

JACK: Oh, absolutely! You can count on it.

Doc settles back into his chair, assuming a relaxed posture, clasping his hands behind his head.

DOC: This doesn’t bear on whether your argument is sound, but one aspect of it that I find appealing is that it could be understood as a corrective to what Aristotle says about the good while nevertheless being closely related to it.

In the Nicomachean Ethics he says, in effect, that every action and pursuit aims at some good, so the good ought to be understood as that at which everything aims.

Mick furrows her brow in contemplation for a moment.

MICK: Hmm. I guess I see what you mean, but that seems pretty different than what I have in mind. It sounds like he was saying that the good is something external to the activities or actions—like how a target is different than the arrow aimed at it—whereas I meant the good is, itself, and activity.

DOC: Yes, that’s what I took you to mean, but my understanding is that Aristotle also suggests that goods are internal to activities or that they are activities.

JACK: Intellectual contemplation would be the exemplar.

Mick rolls her eyes.

MICK: Of course a philosopher would claim that intellectual contemplation is good!

JACK: Haha. The gusto with which you engage in it suggests to me that you don’t really disagree.

MICK: Maybe so.

Doc is thoughtfully tapping the eraser of his pencil against his desk.

DOC: So, let’s see. An “inactive activity” is confused on the face of it, but it occurs to me that there is a potentially significant difference between it and the confused notion of a bodiless body. Bodies are things—entities—and every entity has real properties. Actions aren’t really things. I mean, they aren’t substances. So they wouldn’t have properties, at least not in the same way. We can say things about them—why they are undertaken, how successful they were, and so on—but these are simply assessments, not attributions of real properties internal to the activity.

MICK: Sure, I think I agree. Does that really undermine what I'm saying?

DOC: No, I suppose not. What I have in mind is that attributing the so-called property of being inactive to an activity may very well be mistaken, but it’s because it isn’t the sort of thing we can meaningfully say about an action.

JACK: I guess I took that to be Mick’s point. Or, at least, it’s another way of stating it.

DOC: Yeah, I can see that. It’s just a clarification. (Pauses.) But what about “good” and specifically the goodness of an action? Mick, you were saying that anything that is good is an action, and despite the fact that it seems meaningful to say the good is immutable, the idea of saying an activity is immutable doesn’t make sense. Given the identity of the good and actions, it follows that it ultimately doesn’t make sense to say the good is immutable, despite our ordinary ways of speaking.

Jack looks over at Mick and raises a skeptical eyebrow.

JACK: I think he just needed to talk through it on his own terms.

DOC: Yeah, sorry. I am curious to hear more about how you are conceiving of the good, Mick. I presume you don’t take it to be a synonym for action.

MICK: No, I don’t. I take it that there are both good and bad actions.

JACK: So, would it be accurate to say you meant that good and bad are assessments that only apply to actions?

MICK: Yes, I think that’s what I was driving at, or at least should’ve been driving at. (Pauses.) Of course, we describe people as good or bad, too, but I think in order for a person to be good they have to be inclined to do good actions.

JACK: Okay, so then the question becomes on what basis are we justified in attributing goodness or badness to an action—or rather, as Doc clarified, when is it appropriate to assess them in this way?

DOC: Maybe it would be helpful to first clarify what you have in mind when you refer to an action. I say this because I know some people think that everything we do is an action whereas other people think that we can choose to not engage in action or, in other words, to be inactive.

MICK: Oh, that’s interesting. I think of an action as whatever follows from a conscious choice.

DOC: Does that mean that during every waking moment we are acting in some way, or are there moments when we are not acting?

MICK: Hmm. I hadn’t explicitly thought about it before, and I would have been inclined to say that when someone is just laying around or sitting down they aren’t doing anything, but now that I am thinking about it, that doesn’t seem right. Clearly, they are doing something: specifically, laying down or sitting.

DOC: Right, so it seems that whatever someone is consciously doing is an action.

JACK: And we could allow that a person who is unconscious isn’t really acting at all, right?

MICK: Yes, I think that seems right. We could say they were acting when they went to bed, but once they are unconscious, they are no longer acting, even if their body engages in unconscious movement.

DOC: I have a second, related question before we go on to consider when we would be justified in attributing goodness or badness to an action. Can actions occur over a great length of time or do you think they are rather short-lived?

JACK: I was just wondering the same thing. If I resolve to renovate a room in my house, for example, is the whole effort an action, or are the actions the more simple steps I take in the process of doing so?

MICK: In a sense, the whole project is an action since it is a conscious choice. However, I think the word “project” is a better term. A project is composed of various actions, and each of those actions has a conscious intention that causes them, but they are all also aiming at the completion of the project as a whole.

JACK: That’s a helpful distinction. A project is a set of ordered actions. But actions themselves are ordered, right?

MICK: Yes, though I suppose some actions aren’t very tightly ordered. Or at least they aren’t ordered toward longer-term goals.

DOC: Right, like blowing my nose or twiddling my thumbs.

MICK: Haha, yes, exactly.

JACK: Okay, let’s get back to the main question that we were going to explore: when is it appropriate to say that an action is good or bad?

MICK: Well, there was a lot going on in my head when I initially formulated the idea that actions are the types of things that can be good or bad. First I was thinking that only actions are the sorts of things that can be evaluated as useful or not. When an action fails to bring about the thing that we aim at, it is a bad action, and when it brings about what we aimed at, it is a good action.

DOC: I think that would force us to claim that all sorts of actions are good that we otherwise think are bad: for example, a serial killer effectively stalking their victim. If they succeed in doing so, the action would be good, which isn’t correct.

MICK: Right. I thought of something like that too, but I didn’t get so morbid! But yes, that’s why I revised my own thinking. I realized that the end goal itself must be good.

JACK: Ah! But doesn’t that mean that it isn’t actions per se that are good or bad, but rather the things they aim at?

MICK: Yes, but what I have in mind is that everything an action aims at is itself an action. There is no meaningful sense in which what we aim for is a state of complete and utter inaction, stasis, or absolute entropy. 

DOC: Whoa! That’s quite a way of putting it. I think you’ve thought this through more than you initially let on.

MICK: Haha, well, yes. I turned over quite a few ideas and even wrote them down. However, they weren’t hanging together in my mind until just now. But that’s definitely what I want to say: the highest good we aim at is not itself something static, but rather dynamic. It is a life, and life is necessarily active. 

She pulls out a sheet of paper from her pocket and unfolds it. 

MICK: Here’s one of the things I wrote down:

I’ve got it! Actions are good in the significant moral sense when they contribute to or  are part of the project of helping the world flourish. That seems at least plausible, right?

DOC: Yes, and it is rather beautifully stated. Also, I think I can see a way in which we can can say it is even more deeply opposed to what Augustine suggests. He thinks that the changes we experience in this life—loss, illness, death, et cetera—rob it of lasting value. So, he places his hope in something stable and unchanging. 

JACK: Right. “Eternal rest” becomes his ultimate object of desire.

MICK: Okay! This is helpful! That’s precisely what I think is ridiculous. We should not desire eternal rest. That’s not the grand project. We should desire and seek to realize a sustainable life and we should accept that any such life is going to have tragic elements within it. In the face of the insecurities of life we should say, “yes,” not “no.”

DOC: Haha, something like “Bring it on!”

MICK: Exactly! That was basically what Baldwin was suggesting, in his own way.

JACK: Right. Here’s the rub, though. What you are saying is that we should desire and orient ourselves in a particular way, but you can’t really argue an Augustinian into that position. The view remains an incommensurable alternative.

MICK: I don’t see how. We just walked through the reasons for rejecting Augustine’s static desire and hope: it is a confused notion. A life of “eternal rest” is incoherent. Life is activity, not rest.

JACK: Don’t get me wrong, I agree with you in large part. But I don’t think the idea is incoherent in the way you’ve put it. What Augustine wants is a life that is not marked by death, loss, and decay. Or perhaps to be fairer to him, he wants to relate to life in the way God must: through the lens of eternity, where death and loss do not constitute the horizon of our lives. 

MICK: But isn’t that just an imagined possibility that cannot be actualized? A pipe dream? How can there be life without change, decay, and even death? I’m totally with Baldwin on this: we have to accept life as it is, not turn our backs on it and imagine ourselves trying to achieve some pure, unchanging, heavenly state. 

DOC: That, I think, is the existential issue that cannot be answered with any amount of argumentation but must instead be lived. Our response to the question of how to live can only be borne out in our lives. 

JACK: Exactly. The incommensurability cannot be rationally overcome. We must simply choose. The fact that we can genuinely choose between incommensurable options is just another way of saying that we are free.

DOC: But free in the sense that Jean-Paul Sartre described it: “we are condemned to be free.” We must choose; there is no way of being in the world without choosing. 

MICK: Oof. It’s time for a drink. 

Doc laughs and opens his desk drawer and produces a bottle of Scotch. He pours each of them a glass.

JACK: I’m really torn by the choice. On the one hand, I think there is something valuable about Augustine’s view, at least when it is understood as a desire and an attempt to relate to life without death constituting the horizon of our being. But on the other hand, I clearly agree with you, Mick, that Baldwin is correct: we have to accept death as the horizon of our being. 

MICK: Ah, I finally see why you want to describe them as incommensurable positions. The way you just put it draws out the stark contrast. But I still don’t think they are ultimately incompatible, even though they seem like contradictory views. It’s true that we will die, and I think that we need to accept that, full stop. But that doesn’t mean we need to fall into despair. In some sense, I think the fact that we will die is exactly why our lives have meaning. I’m just not sure how to articulate why that’s the case. 

DOC: I think I have something that can help. A couple of years ago I read a book called This Life, which addresses exactly the point you’re making. Let me find it. 

He gets up and rummages through a stack of books. 

Here we go! I can’t recommend this book enough, Mick. It’s by a Swedish philosopher, Martin Hägglund, and the full title is This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom. Let me find the part that I think is most relevant to what you were saying. 

He flips through the dog-eared pages and looks at the sticky notes that peak out over the edges. 

Okay, so he says, “The question of what I ought to do with my life—a question that is at issue in everything I do—presupposes that I understand my time to be finite. For the question of how I should lead my life to be intelligible as a question, I have to believe that I will die.”

MICK: Yes! That is exactly what I have in mind. 

She pauses for a moment, thinking. 

I want to go back to how you characterized Augustine’s concern, Jack. You said he wants to relate to life in the way God must, and that means looking at it from the perspective of eternity. 

A few days ago—I think it was during our first conversation—you explained that you think of god as love itself. I started reading Doc’s copy of the Essence of Christianity. Bearing that in mind, I take it you were indicating that you don’t think of god as some supernatural being, or what Feuerbach calls “the divine subject.” Rather, you think of god totally in terms of what he calls “the divine predicate.” Is that right?

JACK: Yes, indeed. And I have to say, I don’t want to ever hear you claim you’re not good at philosophy! That was very well put. 

Mick blushes and continues. 

MICK: Okay, so in light of that, I don’t think you should find Augustine’s way of thinking too worrisome. He is assuming god is a being with a perspective, specifically an eternal perspective. This is a Zeus-like way of thinking about god. But you don’t believe in such a being. 

JACK: Eek. You are really making me take ownership of what I said. (After a pause.) I’m a bit uncomfortable saying I don’t believe in God in the same way that Augustine does. But I suppose you’re right in the sense that I don’t want to use his language. Like Feuerbach, I think there is a danger of viewing God as a pure subject who only accidentally loves. The best way to think about God is as love itself. 

DOC: Wait, I want to make sure I understand what you two are getting at. Mick, you’re claiming that Augustine’s view takes too seriously the idea that God is outside of time. Is that right?

MICK: Yes, that’s a good way of putting it. If Jack’s characterization is right, Augustine is thinking of god as a Zeus-like figure who stands outside of time and sees everything all at once. And I take it that he wants to relate to the world as much like god as humanly possible. 

DOC: And you think that if we adopt Jack’s strict identification of God with love, then that means we shouldn’t think of God as a person standing outside of time.

MICK: Exactly. (After a pause.) Oh! I think I’ve nailed down what I want to say. Jack, you said that Augustine thinks god views reality through the lens of eternity. But I think you should say that the relation of love to reality is one of boundlessness. 

JACK: Yes! That is really helpful! And now I’m glad you made me stick to my guns. 

DOC: I agree. That is a really helpful formulation. Let’s see how that bears on Jack’s allegation that Augustine’s and Baldwin’s perspectives are incommensurable. We’re clearly working with a modified version of Augustine’s view, but I think I can see how it is compatible with Baldwin’s. Like Baldwin, we can accept life as it is, without thinking that the point is to get to some pure, unchanging, heavenly state where nothing is at risk. And we can do so by being faithfully committed to the boundlessness of love. Does that sound right?

Mick: Yes, that’s what I had in mind, but now I’m wondering how literally we’re supposed to take the term “boundless.” 

Doc and Jack both laugh.

JACK: You are, as they say, your own worst critic.

Mick: Haha. It’s fun! Anyways, the problem that I now see is that if Baldwin’s view is correct, love ends at the grave. So it is bounded.

JACK: Right, and if there is one thing the Christian tradition, which Augustine belongs to, has stood for it is that love is everlasting. The whole promise of the resurrection is that we participate in the God that is love and we do so without end.  

DOC: I suppose we could think about it in poetic terms. Or, maybe a better way to put it would be to say that we hope that love is, in some mysterious way which we can’t fully comprehend, boundless. 

MICK: Hmm. Yes, I suppose I can understand that. 

JACK: That seems to me an important existential choice. Do we live as if love is boundless and hope for its full consummation? Or do we live as if it is temporally limited and will not be fully consummated?

MICK: I don’t think it’s an either/or proposition. I think we need to live knowing full well that the project might not be realized, but nevertheless we will stick to the project because being loved and in love is an intrinsically good way of being. 

DOC: We could say that at least one of the ways in which love is boundless is that its value isn’t contingent on it being successful in some external sense. 

MICK: Right! It’s value is literally not bounded.

JACK: This brings to mind my favorite line from Les Misérables: “To love, or to have loved,—this suffices. Demand nothing more. There is no other pearl to be found in the shadowy folds of life. To love is a fulfillment.”

MICK: Oh, that is beautiful. (Pauses.) And it expresses the whole idea we’ve been dancing around. It affirms Baldwin’s view—“the shadowy folds of life”— and it affirms the modified Augustinian view—“love is a fulfillment.”

JACK: You’re right. 

MICK: So, see? They aren’t incommensurable. It’s just that we often think they are.

Jack throws up his hands. 

JACK: I admit, you’ve got me! 

They all chuckle and eventually take a drink.

Notes

1. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans., Ostwald (Macmillan Publishing Company, 1962).

2. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism (Yale University Press, 2007).

3. Martin Hägglund, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom (Pantheon Books, 2019), p. 5.

4. Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, trans., Hapgood (Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1887), Book VI, Chapter 2.