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Single Idea 2147

[filed under theme 22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 1. Goodness / a. Form of the Good ]

Full Idea

The sight of goodness shows that it is responsible for everything that is right and fine,…and it is the source and provider of truth and knowledge. It is necessary for intelligent conduct of private and public affairs.

Gist of Idea

The sight of goodness leads to all that is fine and true and right

Source

Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 517c)

Book Ref

Plato: 'Republic', ed/tr. Waterfield,Robin [OUP 1993], p.244


A Reaction

As so often with Plato, I am baffled by such a claim. I sometimes see things in the world which strike me as right or fine, but I cannot conceive of a separate 'sight of goodness'.


The 24 ideas with the same theme [goodness as a perfect and eternal idea]:

Plato says the Good produces the Intellectual-Principle, which in turn produces the Soul [Homer, by Plotinus]
The good is beautiful [Plato]
The good involves beauty, proportion and truth [Plato]
Neither intellect nor pleasure are the good, because they are not perfect and self-sufficient [Plato]
The main aim is to understand goodness, which gives everything its value and advantage [Plato]
Every person, and every activity, aims at the good [Plato]
For Plato we abandon honour and pleasure once we see the Good [Plato, by Taylor,C]
Good has the same role in the world of knowledge as the sun has in the physical world [Plato]
Goodness makes truth and knowledge possible [Plato]
The sight of goodness leads to all that is fine and true and right [Plato]
Bad is always destructive, where good preserves and benefits [Plato]
I can form no notion of what the good is [Amphis]
The good is 'that at which all things aim' [Aristotle]
Each category of existence has its own good, so one Good cannot unite them [Aristotle]
There should be one science of the one Good, but there are many overlapping sciences [Aristotle]
Is the good a purpose, a source of movement, or a pure form? [Aristotle]
The good is what is perfect by nature [Diogenes of Babylon, by Blank]
Saying the good is useful or choiceworth or happiness-creating is not the good, but a feature of it [Sext.Empiricus]
It is always an open question whether anything that is natural is good [Moore,GE]
We can ask of pleasure or beauty whether they are valuable, but not of goodness [Ross]
There are two goods - the absolute good we want, and the reachable opposite of evil [Weil]
The good is a nothingness, and yet real [Weil]
'Good' is an attributive adjective like 'large', not predicative like 'red' [Geach, by Foot]
The good is implicitly violent (against evil), so there is no pure good [Derrida]