The Good · Atlas

in the texts

Nicomachean EthicsClassical · Greek

The ultimate end at which all human action and inquiry aims, sought throughout the passage as the object of ethical and political science.

whereas the Supreme Good seems to be something final.

chapter 1 ¶

Or is there nothing else good in itself except the Idea?

chapter 1 ¶

But in what sense then are different things called good?

chapter 1 ¶

MemorabiliaClassical · Greek

Moral and practical value identified with usefulness and with choosing the better rather than the worse.

Now to seek the Good, Euthydemus:

chapter 14 ¶

So you think Courage useful for no mean purposes?

chapter 2 ¶

Should you call anything good except what is useful?

chapter 4 ¶

LysisClassical · Greek

The abstract value examined as a candidate for the true object of friendship, first as cure for the bad and later through the belonging/likeness distinction.

But now, is the good a friend?

lysis ¶

And further, it is because of the bad that the good is loved;

lysis ¶

But this again, you know, is a view of which we thought we had disabused ourselves;

lysis ¶

PhilebusClassical · Greek

The central object of inquiry in the passage: the good life or good mixture, ultimately identified with beauty, proportion, and truth, against which pleasure and mind are ranked.

We said that truth also was mingled with them in the compound.

philebus ¶

So now the power of the good has taken refuge in the nature of the beautiful;

philebus ¶

Then, according to the judgement which has now been given by our discussion, the power of pleasure would be fifth.

philebus ¶

RepublicClassical · Greek

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?

chapter 2 ¶

Letters to LuciliusImperial · Latin

The philosophical good, subject of definitional analysis in Letter 118

What is good could have been evil;

letter 118 ¶

what is good is according to Nature;

letter 118 ¶

"You admit," you say, "that what is good is according to Nature;

letter 118 ¶

Adversus HermogenemLate Antiquity · Latin

Moral categories debated as to whether they are substances with place, or mere relations, in connection with Matter's motion.

For when you wish to introduce Matter as neither good nor evil, Therefore, you say, the underlying Matter, having a motion of equal momentum, inclines greatly neither to good nor to evil.

adversus hermogenem ¶

42. You have scattered all things, lest, set side by side, they should shine out as contrary to each other. But I will gather the individual points and confer them. You assert the motion of Matter to be unfounded, and you add that it followed formlessness; then elsewhere, that it desired to be composed by God. Does that which follows formlessness desire formation? Or does that which desires format …

adversus hermogenem ¶