Human Welfare and the Whole Person

Growth and development can lead all too easily to discomforts, inequities and a less humane community if entrepreneurial ventures lose sight of their true purpose, the increase of human welfare in its complete sense, called seeking virtue; to increase the stock of human welfare is to become more humane. Complete human welfare embodies the whole person, in three parts, called the tripartite nature of man, the physical, the mental, and the spiritual. A whole person consists equally of these three parts, coexisting and merging with no clear line between them. Virtuous activity leads to human welfare only if it builds one of these, if not, the effort does not contribute to human welfare. Many activities will even subtract from human welfare. A form of the tripartite nature is found in natural law theology in the form of “Transcendentals,” the good, the true, and the beautiful, the connections between nature and man. Beauty, when something is exactly as nature intended, can lead to truth, which in turn leads to goodness.