Some defenders of perfect being theology have suggested that it is antithetical to the very idea of perfect being theology that there be perfections that could be exemplified only contingently.
It is now traditional within perfect being theology to distinguish, following John Duns Scotus, between pure perfections and impure, or mixed, perfections (Ordinatio 1.3.1, found in Philosophical Writings, p. 24).
Whether we should think perfect goodness is actually exemplified in an absolutely perfect being will depend not only on whether we think that some being exemplifies perfect goodness but also on whether we think that being exemplifies the other perfections, say, omniscience and omnipotence.
But they are not pure perfections because they entail perturbation and suffering.
Tragedy is more complicated since the sympathy that we feel for the tragic figure is based upon both objective and subjective perfections (i.e., in him or her and us) as well as upon objective imperfection, the pain and injustice that befall him or her.
Taken together, the attributes shown to belong to what must be amount to a set of perfections: everlasting existence, immutability, the internal invariances of wholeness and uniformity, and the invariance at its extremity of being optimally shaped.
Hence Addison's fundamental idea comes to this, apparently: taste judges what the imagination represents; the perfections that taste discerns with pleasure are perfections that things have as objects of visual representation.
More illuminating is Hurka's view (1993 and Hurka 2007) that Nietzsche's evaluative posture conjoins perfectionism with maximizing consequentialism: what has value are certain human excellences (or perfections), and states of affairs are assessed in terms of their maximization of these excellences.
Clarke holds that the moral perfections of the deity are essential aspects of the divine nature.
This view holds that we should value the perfection of each and every human being, but in aggregating human perfection we should count the greater perfections more, by some multiplier, than the lesser perfections.[5] The prioritarian version of perfectionism is not elitist, since it does not imply that the lives of those who can achieve more count for more.
Still, virtually all Augustinians agree with Jonathan Edwards concerning this: Whatever the precise nature of the suffering, "In hell God manifests his being and perfections only in hatred and wrath, and hatred without love" (Edwards 1738, 390).
