Gerhart Niemeyer once began an essay on modernity’s loss of the knowledge of true goodness with the blunt observation that “There is an order of goodness in the universe, and human knowledge can attain to it. The proposition is made here as an assertion and an affirmation. In the context of the question raised by this paper it comes as a premise which, if we did not have it, would leave us without anything to talk about.” But what of the man endowed with moral sensibilities, well-read and attentive to social patterns, but who is nonetheless without the experience of the order of goodness to be found in the universe? This is the central issue in the work of John Kekes, who since 1976 has published numerous books concerned with proposing and defending an entirely secular interpretation of the meaning of “good lives.”. . .