WHAT IS GOOD? DONALD S. AMHERST MA.

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German chocolate cake is good! ;)

Kidding aside, philosophers have identified several ways of trying to answer this question, and I will allow those whose views are different from mine to provide their own replies. As for me, I am inclined to follow the view of the ancient Greeks, who supposed that there may be several sorts of goods, but that ultimately the highest good for human beings is eudaimonia (a Greek word that is difficult to translate, but which is usually translated as "happiness" or--my own preference--as "flourishing"). But what is eudaimonia? Perhaps the clearest answer to this question is given by Aristotle in Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics. There, Aristotle identifies the highest good for human beings as something that must be

(a) distinctly human (hence pleasure, though generally good, cannot be the highest good for human beings),

(b) something for the sake of which we do what we do, but which we choose for its own sake, and not only for the sake of some further thing (so Aristotle calls it a "final" end, and this is why wealth cannot be the highest good for a human being, because we pursue wealth for the sake of what we can use it to obtain)

(c) something that, once obtained, is fairly stable and not easily taken away from one (hence, transient feelings of various sorts can't be the highest goods for human beings)--this is what Aristotle calls the "self-sufficiency" condition

(d) something that is realized in activity (because what's good for a human being is mostly to be assessed in what happens when we are awake and active, and not when we are unconscious).

Surveying this list of conditions, Aristotle decides that the highest good for human beings is activity in accordance with a rational principle (that within us by which we make deliberate and intelligent judgments and choices), or--in his theory, the same thing--activity in accordance with virtue or excellence.

Aristotle says that if we live our lives in such a way as to pursue this (eudaimonia) in intelligent and prudent ways, we will live the best lives possible.

Sounds good to me!

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