Are Good Workers Good People?
Weaving our way through the many sense of the simple word "good"
What does it mean to be a “good thief”? You might think of a kind of Robin Hood who only steals for the sake of justice. But really, this kind of character is no thief at all: Robin Hood is only giving the poor what they deserved in the first place. We might think of the good thief of the Gospel who repents at the last moment—but he’s admirable because he’s given up thievery and admitted his wrongdoing, even if it took him until the last moment of his life.
There’s this first sense of “good thief”: A thief who’s somehow justified. But there’s a second clear sense of “good thief”: Someone who’s just good at stealing things. Putting aside justice, we can very easily imagine someone who’s just got a knack for taking from others.
Oddly, these two kinds of thieves seem to be total opposites: A “good” thief can’t be a “good” thief. The ruthlessness, deception, and scheming that make for a skilled thief don’t make for a very admirable person. Even the heroic thief is often an anti-hero: Though we might admire their actions, we must admit that there’s still something unheroic about this.
We could just dismiss this as a little confusion of our language. Still, those confusions are very often meaningful. What’s the connection between these two sorts of good? Is this skilled “good” altogether unrelated to this “moral” good? Could one easily be a good teacher, good accountant, or good engineer while being a bad person?
It’s not too difficult to figure out the semantic problem here: We can use “good” in the narrow sense of skill at a craft or in the broad sense of virtue and character. But I think it’s worth picking apart just how these senses are connected—and, most importantly, just how we can make “good” work part of a good life.
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When Is It Good to Be Good?
We’ve found a narrow sense of good and a broader sense of good. How do these two relate to one another? Must a good person be a good worker? Must a good worker be a good person?
The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre once confronted a question very much like this. (Most of this little essay is based on his book Dependent Rational Animals, which I have cited in the essay below along with a few others). When we talk about a good thief or a good shepherd, what does that say about our idea of good in general?
We’ve discovered two main concepts of “good” in this context: A sort of “moral” good (synonymous with “moral”) and a “technical” good (synonymous with “skilled”). For MacIntyre, there are actually three ideas of good to be found here. First is our “technical” good: It’s to be skilled at a particular means, disregarding any sort of ends. Maybe you’re good at picking locks and climbing through windows—but these, of course, are just means to an end, and we still need to consider what that end might be.
The second concept of “good” is similar, though broader: It’s to say that someone is good in a certain role or practice. The difference here is subtle: It’s about how well you can achieve the goods of a particular practice. A “good fisherman” is someone who displays all the traits necessary to fish well and achieves the best fishing has to offer. (What exactly those goods are is up for debate, of course—for some, it might be catching fish well, but for others, it might mean calmly enjoying a good day on the water.)
Each of these is a sort of “relative” good. They’re good in a particular context—you might be good at a useful skill or at a worthwhile practice. And, of course, each applies neatly to work. Someone can be good at spreadsheeting, sawing, or whatever particular skill you might have in mind. When we say that someone’s a good teacher, accountant, or any other job, we mean that they achieve the goals of that job well: There’s a defined goal that they can achieve well.
But these don’t exist in a vacuum. We’re still left wondering where they fit within life as a whole. This is MacIntyre’s final concept of good: How do we order these things in our lives? Being a good fisherman is good, but what happens if you neglect everything else—work, family, and so on—to go fishing? Though I’m sure this is a fantasy for some, it’s clear that this is only “good” in the final sense when your life is in order. It’s a good thing to be a good fisherman so long as fishing contributes to the good of your life in general—and, maybe more importantly, doesn’t get in the way of other good things.
Though it may seem confusing at first, we can see a clear pattern emerging: Good skills contribute to good activities, which contribute to good life. Each type of good contributes to the next level of good.
Doing Good and Doing Well
Snooty grammarians will tell you that it’s a mistake to say you’re “doing good” when you mean you’re “doing well”—“good” can be an adjective or noun, but never an adverb. But with a bit of philosophizing, maybe we’ll find that doing good is often the conclusion of doing well.
With the two “lower” types of good, we face the same question: To what end? A skilled thief is only “good” towards a bad end—it fails our final judgment. These skills and practices are “good” in a relative sense: They can help you if you want to reach a certain goal. But what happens when we go beyond this narrow relativism?
For MacIntyre, the final level of good does not offer easy answers. It’s not too hard to figure out if someone is “good” at typing or a “good” trucker because we have clear, objective goals and metrics: If you can type 100 words per minute with only occasional errors, you’re a good typist. If you’ve driven a million miles without an accident, you’re a good trucker. On the other hand, what does it mean to be a “good human being”?
Without a doubt, that’s part of why it’s comforting to identify with your work. Maybe people can question whether you’re good at your job, but there’s nice, objective evidence to fall back on. What’s the equivalent evidence for a “good person”? Is that same certainty possible?
And maybe there is no perfectly satisfying definition of good here. Maybe the best we can say is something like this: Work is good when it offers us the chance to fully engage with that final level of human good.
This, of course, means that work must offer the scaffolding for a full life—work is where we build the first few blocks on the hierarchy of needs. But it also means that work shouldn’t distract us or take us away from these serious conversations about the good. “Good thieves” (or anyone stuck in an unjust job) must ignore these questions to keep doing what they’re doing. A “good fisherman” who neglects everything else is quite clearly avoiding these questions.
But when these practices are rightly situated in life—when they don’t take up all your attention or demand some form of ignorance—they’re a real means to engage with these questions. In finding our way through the small questions of justice and goodness, we train those same skills that engage with the final questions of our humanity.
Can a “good thief” be good? There are, of course, many ways to answer that (at least three). But we might always ask “good to what end?” Good at a particular skill, good in a particular role, or good in that open-ended sense that defines our humanity?