Abstract
In q. 94, a. 2 of the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas Aquinas lists some of the goods toward which we are naturally inclined. Germain Grisez has completed the list of these «basic goods». This article presents the characteristics of these goods: 1) they are not individualistic or egoistic; 2) they are indefinite, open-ended; 3) they are all equally human; 4) they possess an existential reality; 5) they are not moral goods; 6) they are irreducible or incommensurable with one another; 7) there is no hierarchy among them; 8) they are interdependent and closely related. Some of these characteristics are especially important to show that proportionalism and consequentialism cannot work as a method for making moral decisions.