The Good
idea · 4 works · 7 mentions · 11 anchored passages
the Good · Good · Supreme Good · good · Ideal Good · Universal Good · better · good and evil · kinds of good · the Chief Good
in the texts
Nicomachean Ethics
The ultimate end at which all human action and inquiry aims, sought throughout the passage as the object of ethical and political science.
If therefore among the ends at which our actions aim there be one which we will for its own sake, while we will the others only for the sake of this, and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (which would obviously result in a process ad infinitum, so that all desire would be futile and vain), it is clear that this one ultimate End must be the Good, and indeed the Supreme Good.
But perhaps it is desirable that we should examine the notion of a Universal Good, and review the difficulties that it involves, although such an inquiry goes against the grain because of our friendship for the authors of the Theory of Ideas.
Every art and every investigation, and likewise every practical pursuit or undertaking, seems to aim at some good:
Republic
A threefold classification of goods (desired for themselves alone, for themselves and consequences, or for consequences alone) used to frame the question of justice's value.
do you agree that there is a kind of good which we would choose to possess, not from desire for its after effects, but welcoming it for its own sake?
Letters to Lucilius
The philosophical good, subject of definitional analysis in Letter 118
The subject itself reminds me to say what the difference is between the good and the honourable.
the good is that which moves toward itself the impulse of the mind according to Nature, and is then at last to be sought, when it has begun to be worth seeking.
its greatness has carried it over into another property and made it a good.
Memorabilia
Moral and practical value identified with usefulness and with choosing the better rather than the worse.
Or don’t you think that incontinence prevents them from attending to useful things and understanding them, by drawing them away to things pleasant, and often so stuns their perception of good and evil that they choose the worse instead of the better?
No, only the self-controlled have power to consider the things that matter most, and, sorting them out after their kind, by word and deed alike to prefer the good and reject the evil.
Moreover, the delights of learning something good and excellent, and of studying some of the means whereby a man knows how to regulate his body well and manage his household successfully, to be useful to his friends and city and to defeat his enemies — knowledge that yields not only very great benefits but very great pleasures — these are the delights of the self-controlled;