the highest good
“summum bonum”
idea · 2 works · 7 mentions · 15 anchored passages
the end of goods · summum bonum · the uttermost good · highest good · telos · the ends of goods · the happy life · the uttermost · the uttermost of goods · the uttermost of goods and evils
spoken of as
1 expressionHighest good“summum bonum / telos”2 mentions
On Moral Ends (Latin)
For we must inquire where that highest good lies which we wish to find, since both pleasure has been removed from it, and much the same things can be said against those who would have freedom from pain to be the end of goods;
in the texts
On Moral Ends
The central ethical concept of the dialogue: the ultimate good or end toward which human life should be directed, whose correct definition is disputed between the Stoics and their predecessors.
For of whatever kind of creature you establish, it must be — even if it be without a body, as we imagine — that there are yet in the mind certain things like those which are in the body, so that in no way, except as I have set forth, can the end of goods be established.
But if we were not seeking the highest good of man, but of some living creature, and that were nothing but mind — for let it be allowed to imagine something of that kind, that we may the more easily find the truth — yet to that mind this end of yours would not belong.
How, then, did it come about that the nature of man alone was that which deserted man, which forgot the body, which placed the highest good not in the whole man, but in a part of man?
Letters to Lucilius
The single guiding end of life, equated with the honorable, from which all particular decisions should be derived.
As often as you wish to know what is to be shunned or what to be sought, look to the highest good, the purpose of your whole life.
As we often look for those with whom we are standing, so for the most part we are ignorant of the end of the highest good though it is set close beside us.
Our counsels go astray because they have nothing toward which to be directed.