Too Much of a Good Thing?

by Jason Stotts

I think the idea of “too much of a good thing” being bad is nonsense and it is based on an incorrect understanding of “good”. For Objectivism, for something to be “good,” it must promote the life of the agent. Good, for Objectivism, is not intrinsic, or by divine decree, or some non-natural property.

Furthermore, all things must be taken in their proper context. Exercising is good for you, but exercising until you die is bad for you.  So, it must be a case of “too much of a good thing,” right?  No, it’s just sloppy thinking and dropping the context that the good arises from.  The context here is of a normal person doing a normal amount of exercise.  It is not about diseased people, or malformed people, or people whose bodies have been injured.  It is also not about someone doing exercise incorrectly, or doing too much of it, or doing only very dangerous exercises.  It is about how a general rational person should exercise and the idea that “exercise is good for you” exists as a general principle that must be applied to the life of any individual agent in question.

Moreover, saying exercise is good for you is making very particular claims that must be based in reality.  It is making claims like exercise increases your heart rate and that makes your heart stronger and having a strong heart means you will live longer and that makes your life better: thus, exercise is good.  If any link in the chain is broken, the claim “exercise is good” becomes no more than a floating abstraction unconnected to reality and devoid of meaning.  If one of the premises in the chain is actually wrong, then the claim is invalidated: if, for example, raising your heart rate meant that you would actually die sooner, then exercise would not be good for you.

If you recognize how these general “x is good for you” claims work, as abstract principles, and that they must be seated in context in reality, then it’s clear that the idea of there being “too much of a good thing” is nonsense.  It utterly disregards everything that makes the original claim of “x is good for you” true.