How would you define good judgment?

 Here’s Montaigne, talking about good judgment:

Whoever thought he lacked sense? … In others we readily acknowledge superior courage, physical strength, experience, agility and beauty; but superior judgment we concede to none.

We all know good judgment when we see it. But if you try to define it, it’s tricky. As Montaigne points out, good judgment is usually something we have and they don’t.

I can’t give you a definition of good judgment, but I’m persuaded it involves the way we go about making decisions when all the facts aren’t in.

If we knew all the facts, the smart move would be obvious. But life is seldom like that. Being in a position where you have to make decisions without knowing all that you need to know … well, to me, that just about covers the human condition.

• Sources: The quotation comes from “On Presumption” in Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays, translated by M.A. Screech; London: Penguin Books, 1993, p. 745. Although I put down Paul Woodruff’s Reverence (Oxford University Press, 2001) a week ago, things he wrote keep coming to mind. He said reverence is not the only way to avoid making terrible mistakes. A perfect knowledge of the facts or divine guidance would make me immune from error. (And “error free” would be pretty cool, in terms of good judgment.) But such clarity seems to be beyond me.