Avram Alpert’s essay (Life of the Mind, April 24) suggests that valuing greatness is incompatible with valuing ordinary “good-enough” living. (Note, however, that D.W. Winnicott’s phrase about being “good enough” referred to parenting, not to life in general.) But respect for the qualities needed for ordinary life does not preclude respect for outstanding achievement. Greatness in any field should not be denigrated simply because most people do not reach it.
In trying to put together a countertradition to Western emphasis on greatness, Alpert chooses poor examples. The Romantic period was the heyday of the “great man” approach to history (see Carlyle, for one). Buddhism, too, includes reverence for “great teachers,” starting with Buddha himself.
Should Princeton stop striving to be a great university and settle for being “good enough”? Alpert teaches writing, but does he believe in “great literature”? If not, how does he decide what books to teach? Or is all writing “good enough”?
A compassionate society need not reject greatness. Nor does President Trump’s use of “greatness” mean that his opponents should drop the idea. Perhaps the attitude expressed in this essay could be called “magnaphobia” — fear of greatness.