Interviewed by guest host Kevin Sylvester on the January 3, 2010 program

"Why bother being good? Is it worth being good?"

• Brian Stock, studio guest
  Former professor and international chair of the College de France in Paris and professor emeritus of history and literature at the University of Toronto. His most recent book in English is After Augustine: The Meditative Reader and the Text, published by University of Pennsylvannia Press. In 2007 he was the first Canadian winner of the prestigious International Feltrinelli Prize, an Italian equivalent of the Nobel Prize, which he received for his work in the combined fields of history and literature.
  
  
• Margaret Somerville
  Founding director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law

Guest host Kevin Sylvester's introduction to the January 3, 2009 program:

"Why bother being good? Is it worth being good?"

Good afternoon! And today we're going to talk about "the good". What it means. And what it looks like in 2010. Not just the good resolve of New Year's Resolutions, but also what it mean to be good? To do good? And how do we decide what is good?

I had an interesting conversation this weekend. I was visiting my parents, who were in turn hosting a friend of ours from China, who is studying mathematics in the States.

Knowing that "goodness" was coming up as our topic today, I asked them, "Why do we do good?"

My father, a retired philosophy professor, said we do because we are human. To ask why is an abstraction. Humans are compelled to do good; it is a universal human trait. We get confused when we try to determine what "good" thing we are after, but all of us aim to do good.

Then Shin, our Chinese visitor said we know what to do because the people around us -- our parents, our culture -- tell us what we should do. Our culture, depending on that culture, carries years of experience of fellow humans and their efforts to do what's good. These are often rules, codes, morals.

My mum added that to do good makes us feel good. There is a benefit to ourselves in helping others.

Tomorrow, I'll be helping to run a weekly dinner for the homeless out of my church. It does make me feel good to do that work. I am told by the community around me that it is important to do, and there is an inner call that compels me (without critical reflection per se) that this is a good thing to do.

On my drive in today, one more thought of "goodness" entered my thinking. The Sunday Edition was looking at the great writer E.B. White, who was an optimist even during times of war and nuclear proliferation. He said that his hope was based on the belief that each day each person could do something good. One good thing a day could save the world. So, what good do you plan to do in 2010?

What compels you to do good? Is there someone -- either from history, or a novel, or your real life -- who inspires you towards the good life?

What good do you plan to do in 2010? And why?

That is our question today on Cross-Country Checkup.

Perhaps you have a story of when it was particularly hard to do the right thing. Or maybe a time when you doing good led to unintended consequences.

We have a special guide to help us today. Brian Stock will help us examine what we mean by goodness -- "The Good." Brian is an emeritus professor of history and literature in the Department of English at the University of Toronto, and a man who has spent a great deal of his life examining what we humans are after when we try to be "good."

I'm Kevin Sylvester sitting in for Rex Murphy, on CBC Radio One, and on Sirius satellite radio channel 137. This is Cross Country Checkup.