Virtue at Work: Ethics for Individuals, Managers, and Organizations

by Geoff Moore

Within this description, we can see the two kinds of goods which MacIntyre refers to. Internal goods are those specifically to do with chess, to do with a particular kind of analytical skill, strategic imagination, and competitive intensity. External goods are, in this case, candy. Now we might immediately react to this by saying that candy is actually bad for the girl, so that it cannot be a good in the sense intended. MacIntyre was writing at a time before concerns over the sugar content of food and childhood obesity became prevalent, but even so we might suspect that he used the example deliberately to emphasize the point that we often mistake which kinds of good we should aim for, and that external goods, while highly desirable in one sense, can be bad for us if we seek too much of them.