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Ethics: Questions & Morality of Human Actions, 3rd Edition

The Good

by Patrick M. O’Neil

Definition: That which one ought to do.

Type of ethics: Theory of ethics

Significance: The good is the total of all positive morality: actions one is required to take, qualities which are considered virtuous, and constructive, full, or otherwise admirable ways to live one’s life. It names a presence of moral right rather than a mere absence of moral wrong.

Plato spoke of a kind of trinity of forms: the good, the true, and the beautiful. Each of these corresponded to the perfection of a faculty in humanity. The beautiful was the perfect object of the faculty of judgment. The true was the perfect object of the faculty of the intellect, and the good was the perfect object of the faculty of the will. In Platonic metaphysics, moreover, these three forms enjoy a kind of consubstantiality. In later natural-law thinking, goodness, truth, and beauty were coextensive with being itself.

In the theodicy of Saint Augustine, furthermore, this becomes crucial, since that father of the Church overcame the metaphysical implications of the existence of evil by denying real being to evil: Evil does not enjoy substantial existence but subsists in a kind of parasitic relation to the good. Evil is the absence of a good where a good should be. In the will, this situation amounts to a choice of a lesser good over a greater good.

In these ways, metaphysical notions of goodness interact with ethical conceptions of the good. Classical philosophers as well as patristic and Scholastic theologians held that the human will must always will a good; in reality, there are only goods to be willed.

Aristotle analyzed the nature of goods by distinguishing between intrinsic and nonintrinsic goods (often called instrumental goods). Intrinsic goods are valuable for their own sake, while nonintrinsic goods are sought for the sake of some intrinsic good. Aristotle further noted that among intrinsic goods, one good will be a summum bonum, or ultimate good. The summum bonum for Aristotle (and for Saint Thomas Aquinas) was happiness—eudaimonia—and the activity/state most associated with the achievement of this end was philosophical contemplation for Aristotle and beatitude (with the attendant beatific vision) for Saint Thomas. On account of this divergence, Aristotelian ethics are designated as natural eudaimonism and Thomistic ethics as supernatural, or theological, eudaimonism.

For both Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, the summum bonum served as an architectonic principle that was capable of ordering all other lesser goods in relationship to it. This Aristotelian-Thomistic approach combines eudaimonism with a natural-law approach that conceives of a fixed and universally shared human essence. Each subordinate faculty of humanity has its own teleology—its specific purpose or end (that is, its own good)—but the ends of these are ordered to the final end of humanity.

Natural Law and the Good

This natural-law approach to morality upholds a strict objectivity in ethics, for while a man might pervert his nature by ignoring the promptings of his conscience and his reason, that would in no way alter the nature of his true good. Ethical pluralists deny that there is a summum bonum for humankind; there are only individual choices of goods in accordance with hierarchies of value created by individual tastes and commitments.

The distinction between ethical objectivists and ethical subjectivists in regard to goodness is vital. Subjectivists maintain that there is no activity of persons or state of being that is inherently good unless it produces an appropriate subjective response in the individual. An objectivist, however, claims that some human activities or states of being are inherently good, apart from any subjective response that they may produce in the subject.

Classical hedonism of both the rational school, associated with Epicurus, and the so-called irrationalist school (or Cyrenaic school), associated with Aristippus of Cyrene, claimed pleasure as the inherent good for humanity. In the more sophisticated versions of hedonism, the concept of pleasure is so expanded as to come close to the multifaceted concept of eudaimonia.

In modern times, in both the act utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and the rule utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill, pleasure is the good for humanity, which position has caused many scholars to treat utilitarianism as a special form of hedonism. Classical hedonism developed its social aspects by building up its theory from the individual’s interests, needs, and desires, while utilitarianism, with its central criterion of “the greatest good for the greatest number,” begins with an inherently social perspective.

Both Mill and Bentham defined the good as pleasure, but they differed so radically in their definitions of pleasure that it has been standard practice among philosophers to refer to Bentham’s quantitative theory of pleasure as hedonistic utilitarianism and to Mill’s qualitative theory of pleasure as eudaimonistic utilitarianism.

The Naturalistic Fallacy

There was, perhaps, no more significant development in the modern search for the good than G. E. Moore’s demonstration of the so-called naturalistic fallacy. Having demonstrated that no natural property can be designated as the good, Moore went on to claim that goodness must be a nonnatural property inhering in good acts.

Analytical philosophers of the Anglo-American tradition accepted Moore’s proof that the good could not be a simple natural property, but they rejected his notion that it constituted a nonnatural property, electing instead to assume that the term was used differently in different contexts, indicating quite different natural properties or combinations of natural properties.

Pragmatists such as John Dewey agreed with the analytical philosophers concerning the nature of the good, but they were led to their conclusions by ontological rather than linguistic considerations. Given his commitment to situational ethics and to the ultimate plasticity of human nature, Dewey envisioned the good as varying with historical circumstances and cultural contexts.

Noncognitivist ethicists have interpreted the good in terms of their special linguistic approaches. Emotivists have held the term “good”—like all positive ethical language—to express a positive emotional response to ethical actions in the world: “Charity is good” is translated as an emotional approval of charity. Imperativists hold that ethical statements are overt or covert commands, and “Charity is good,” for them, means “Perform charitable deeds.” Finally, emoto-imperativists see a term such as “good” as combining a command function with emotional responses.

David Hume’s explication of the is/ought problem also must be seen as vital for an understanding of the difficulties that modern ethical philosophers have had with the concept of the good. With the discovery that prescriptive (“ought”) conclusions cannot be derived from descriptive (“is”) premises, the conception of the good was put under an inordinate strain.

Always implicit in the concept of the good had been the notion of “that which one ought to do.” With the is/ought dichotomy, this aspect of the concept of the good was forever divorced from the more substantive contents of its various alternative definitions. Sir Karl Popper noted that the definition of the good as “that which one ought to do” cannot be expanded to accommodate any substantive content beyond that meaning.

In contrast to the consequentialistic tradition in ethics, the great countertradition of formalism arose, defining the good not in view of the consequences of particular acts, but in respect to the form of the ethical judgments that choose those acts. Cicero may be seen as the originator of formalism, with his unique ethical theory that derived from the academics of the late Platonic school, the peripatetics of the late Aristotelian school, and the stoics. In Ciceronian moral philosophy, the summum bonum was equated generally with virtue and specifically with the virtue of honestum, or right doing.

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant, whose ethical thought seems to have been influenced by Cicero and the stoics, is the very epitome of a formalist ethician. Although Kant believed that a properly virtuous person would ultimately enjoy acting morally and would achieve happiness thereby, these considerations were unnecessary for the essential goodness of his or her actions. The goodness of an action rests in its meeting the formal criterion of the categorical imperative: An action whose implicit maxim can become a universalizable law for all moral agents is a good action. Any action not in accord with that standard is a morally impermissible action.

For Kant, furthermore, it is not meritorious to do the correct action because one desires some benefit from that action. A merchant who keeps honest weights and measures because such a practice is good for his business is not acting in a morally good manner. To be morally virtuous, Kant would maintain, an action must be done for the sake of the moral law. That is why Kant could term his ethical system a “deontology”—a science of duty.

In contrast to the absolutist moral claims of Kantian formalism, the various forms of ethical relativism have descriptive definitions of the good. In individual ethical relativism, nothing is held to be right or wrong for the individual person except that which he or she truly believes to be right or wrong. Cultural ethical relativism holds that good actions are those approved by one’s culture and that evil actions are those condemned by one’s culture. Finally, the relativism of situational ethics defines the good in terms of the judgments of one’s historical era and so forth. Divine command morality, one of the less fashionable byways of ethical theory, must be acknowledged as having a formalistic account of the good, for the goodness of acts consists in their being done in response to divine command alone.

The history of ethical philosophy may well be said to be the history of the changing notions of goodness, and that history is a tormented one indeed. In the earliest days of ethical theory, Aristotle found it necessary to abandon Plato’s form of the good because, attractive as that concept was, it seemed to bear no real relationship to human ethics. Aside from possible mystical experience, humans do not seem to have access to the form of the good; thus, it could have no real bearing upon ethical theory.

Aristotle’s abandonment of the form of the good led to great alterations in agathokakological theory—the philosophy of good and evil. While Plato ascribed evil to ignorance—Socrates stated repeatedly that to know the good is to do the good—Aristotle added akrasia (weakness of the will) to the causes of evil.

Aristotle did not deny the role that the Socratic/Platonic concept of evil arose from ignorance, but he held that notion to be inadequate to encompass all evil. Some men know the good, Aristotle believed, but lack the force of will and character to pursue it. In late Judaism and early Christianity, the concept of the free will (liberum arbitrium) and its role in the selection or rejection of the greater good came to play a predominant part. The notion that one may know the good, have the strength of will to do it, and yet deliberately reject it entered theological ethics. Freely chosen evil—the “Mystery of Iniquity”—came not merely to supplement the concepts of ignorance and akrasia as wellsprings of evil but to dominate them. Evil done from ignorance or akrasia in this view would be true moral evil only if the ignorance or akrasia were itself culpable, and that culpability requires that, at the end of the chain of moral causation, a free choice must have been the basis of all else that followed.

In part, concerns of theodicy—the theological/philosophical investigation of divine justice—fueled the Judeo-Christian development of the concept of freely chosen evil. How is it just that God punishes sin if an individual could not act otherwise? Freely chosen evil was the answer that was proposed. In addition, Judeo-Christian demonology, with the figure of Satan/Lucifer, contributed to the need for a new explanation for the rejection of the good, for by traditional doctrine, Lucifer was the highest of all created minds and, as an angel, lacked a lower nature—thus, ignorance and akrasia are excluded as explanations for his evil.

For Kant also, the question of freely chosen evil became a fundamental problem in his ethical theory. In the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1895) and the Critique of Practical Reason (1873), Kant seemed to speak as if deliberately chosen evil were possible. Already, however, there were problems, for true freedom—the autonomous will—was possible only when the will made a law for itself, and that law could only be the categorical imperative.

Finally, in Religion Within the Bounds of Reason Alone (1838), Kant repudiated the notion of freely chosen evil, maintaining that there could be no “devilish minds.” Despite Kant’s conclusion, however, it is unclear that the notion of human free will—the liberum arbitrium, the free choice between good and evil—can be maintained without the concept of freely chosen evil. Furthermore, as hard and soft determinists contest with one another, it is uncertain that moral responsibility can be maintained in the absence of the liberum arbitrium. In this way, the very question of the ability freely and knowingly to reject the good ties into the most basic issues in ethics, such as free will and the existence of moral responsibility.

There is, perhaps, no concept so central to every aspect of ethical philosophy as the concept of goodness. What distinguishes ethical philosophies from one another most often are their differing visions of the good. They are further distinguished by their handling of the brute fact of human rejection of the good. What is the good? Why do people find it attractive? How are some able to reject the good? These are among the three most crucial questions in the ethical sphere.

Further Reading

1 

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated and edited by Roger Crisp. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Explores the nature of the good, which Aristotle defines as leading a fully human existence or flourishing (eudaimonia).

2 

Brandt, Richard B. A Theory of the Good and the Right. Rev. ed. Foreword by Peter Singer. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1998. The good is seen as the object of rational desire.

3 

Carson, Thomas L., and Paul K. Moser, eds. Morality and the Good Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. An excellent anthology of significant, mainly contemporary, moral philosophy. The first two sections are “Concepts of Goodness” and “What Things Are Good?”

4 

Hinde, Robert A. Why Good Is Good: The Sources of Morality. New York: Routledge, 2002. Written by a biologist, this book attempts a truly interdisciplinary genealogy of morality, combining anthropology, evolutionary biology, psychology, and philosophy to determine the origins of ethical ideas and conduct.

5 

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Edited by Richard Tuck. Rev. student ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Rational prudence is seen as the basis of morality, and ethical egoism is defended as the true moral philosophy.

6 

Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Edited and translated by Allen W. Wood. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002. The good will (proper moral intention to obey the moral law) is seen as the source of all ethical good.

7 

Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. Edited by George Sher. 2d ed. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001. The greatest good—defined as a kind of eudaimonistic pleasure—for the greatest number is seen as the standard of the good action for moral agents.

8 

Oates, Whitney Jennings, ed. Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers: The Complete Extant Writings of Epicurus, Epictetus, Lucretius, Marcus Aurelius. New York: Modern Library, 1957. The stoic notions of virtue and the Epicurean idea of pleasure as the highest good for humanity may be found in a number of different representatives of these schools who have been assembled in this anthology.

9 

Plato. The Republic. Translated by Desmond Lee. 2d ed. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. The form of the good is introduced and explicated.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
O’Neil, Patrick M. "The Good." Ethics: Questions & Morality of Human Actions, 3rd Edition, edited by George Lucas & John K. Roth, Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Ethics_0028.
APA 7th
O’Neil, P. M. (2019). The Good. In G. Lucas & J. K. Roth (Eds.), Ethics: Questions & Morality of Human Actions, 3rd Edition. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
O’Neil, Patrick M. "The Good." Edited by George Lucas & John K. Roth. Ethics: Questions & Morality of Human Actions, 3rd Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2019. Accessed October 22, 2025. online.salempress.com.