The Good, the Better, and the Three Kinds of Human Goods

Orientation #

He opens by reviewing “what we said about the good last time” (the induction that the good is the cause of desire) and the Euthyphro-style cause-and-effect question (prev. lecture); he also refers back to “our study of love with Thomas Aquinas”. He points forward to “our deeper study of the good” for further confirmation, and to the Apology as the reason this matters. Text-matching against the audio finds him working from three handouts: “What Is Good & What Is Better - The Order of the Discourse” (p. 4), “A Note on Practical Philosophy” (p. 9, the longest stretch), and “Pride as a Cause of Error” (p. 8); the transcript itself does not name them. The previous class argued inductively that things are desired because good; the next moves to Nicomachean Ethics I and the definition of man’s end.

The class, in order #

1. Review: the first definition of good (“a chain is no stronger than its”) #

Point: better cannot be understood without good, so the last class is reviewed.

• Ask an American boy “what’s good?”: candy, pizza, baseball. Socrates’ follow-up: what do they have in common? Not sweet, not rideable; the boy can only say “these are all the things I want”. First definition: the good is what all want (desire).
• Socrates’ Euthyphro-type question (before/after, cause/effect): is it good because you want it, or wanted because good?
• Objection to “good because wanted”: everyone has wanted something they themselves later called bad (the man who wants “one more drink”).
• Objections to “wanted because good”: (a) kids don’t always want what’s good for them, so cause without effect; (b) people sometimes want the bad, but contrary causes should give contrary effects.
• Answer by induction (more proportioned to us than syllogism): list the fundamental goods shared with animals (food, water, reproduction, sleep) and their desires (hunger, thirst, some unnamed). Hunger does not make food good; food is seen to be good and necessary apart from hunger; nature gives the desire because the object is good, and the desire is stronger when the need is greater. Even the sick man who has lost appetite sees he must eat.
• Conclusion: wanted because good; the good is the cause of desire; the first definition is by the effect, which is more known to us. Aside: opening baseball chatter (Boston, St. Louis; betting the All-Star game with his brother Marcus).

2. Handling the two objections through knowledge (“the good as known in some way”) #

Point: the good causes desire only as known, which dissolves both objections.

• From Thomas on the causes of love: good is the primary cause, but in the second article knowledge is also a cause, “for the same reason the good is”: what is wanted is the good as known.
• Good but not wanted: ignorance. He has never eaten caviar; Romeo could not want Juliet if he had never seen or heard of her.
• Bad but wanted: (a) deception by likeness of bad to good (poisonous mushrooms eaten because they resemble good ones: the good mushroom is the original cause); (b) incomplete knowledge (a delicious-smelling poisonous drink: drawn to it because it tastes good, not because it is poisonous).
• Confirmation: if desire caused good, it would have to do so through knowledge, but knowledge as such does not affect the thing known (“is that piece of paper affected by my seeing it?”). Things act on my heart through eyes or reason; my heart does not act on things through them.

3. Why effects are more known than causes (“the leaves change their color every fall”) #

Point: a definition by effect is normal because our knowledge starts from the senses.

• Every “why?” question presupposes the effect known, the cause unknown.
• Leaves changing colour is more known than why; that the sun comes up is more known than whether sun or earth moves; we agree with the ancients about day and night but might disagree about its cause. Agreement about the effect and disagreement about the cause is a sign the effect is more known.
• “Want” is the native English word, “desire” the Latin one; they are synonyms.

4. Is something better because you want it more? (“gooder, more good”) #

Point: from “not good because wanted” it follows “not better because wanted more”; he pauses to teach the if-then statement.

• The if-then (hypothetical, conditional) is a compound of two simple statements, antecedent (if) and consequent (then).
• Its truth does not depend on the truth of the simple statements: “If I am a dog, then I am a four-footed animal” is true from two falsehoods; “If I am a man, then I am white” is false from two truths; “If Socrates is a mother, then Socrates is a woman” is true from two falsehoods.
• What it depends on: the consequent necessarily follows from the antecedent. Counter-cases where it does not: “if Socrates is a man, then he is a father”; “if this number is less than ten, then it is two.” “If I am two, then I am half a four” asserts neither part.
• To reason to the way things are, add a simple statement known to be so: (i) if A then B, but A is so, therefore B (“if I am a man, then I am an animal; but I am a man”). (ii) If A then B, but B is not so, therefore A is not so [ed.: the two moods he uses are what logic texts call modus ponens and modus tollens; he does not name them].
• Sensible model: something is not sweet because it is white; then it is not sweeter because whiter. Both ways: “if you say sweeter because whiter, you are forced to say sweet because white; but that ain’t so.”
• Applied: “if something is better for me because I want it more, then something is good for me because I want it” (more of the cause, more of the effect). The consequent was excluded last time, so the antecedent falls.
• Daily-life cases of the error: “you want more steak, I want more chicken, so steak’s better for you”; “Mozart’s better for you, Berquist, rock and roll is better for me.” Once this is excluded, “the ball game is over”: one must give a reason why this is better than that.
• Why it matters: in the Apology Socrates examines Athenians about all the goods of life and which are better, urging that goods of the soul are much better than goods of body and exterior goods; the Athenian reply “they’re better for you because you love them more” is exactly the excluded position.

5. What is better in general: whole/part and end/means (“what is better? In general”) #

Point: two most general statements about better, one reducible to the other.

• Aristotle at the start of the Physics (“Natural Hearing”): we know confusedly before distinctly, hence the general before the particular; good reasoning goes from more known to less known. Charles de Koninck: he could do all modern philosophy as a denial of the more known by the less known.
• General statement 1: the whole is better than the part (whole chair, automobile, glasses, body vs. a part).
• General statement 2, tied to the first notion of good: people want one thing for the sake of another (means vs. end); the end is better. Medicine for health: if I had health I would not bother with medicine. The end is better than what is for the sake of it.
• Which is more basic? The class first picks the whole/part as more concrete, but since the part is for the sake of the whole, the whole is the end of the part, so statement 1 is led back to statement 2, which is the most basic.

6. Proving it by induction (“having money or making money”) #

Point: multiply examples of end and means and see the end is better in each.

• Health vs. medicine; having vs. making money; knowing vs. studying; being in Paris vs. flying to Paris; tile floor vs. tiles; brick wall vs. pile of bricks (you pay more for the wall); wine sauce vs. its ingredients; later, winning vs. playing to win.

7. Proving it by syllogism: “on account of which, more so” (“if the same belongs to two things”) #

Point: a universal principle applied to end and means yields the same conclusion.

• Aristotle and Thomas state it briefly (propter quod unumquodque et illud magis); he unfolds it: if the same belongs to two things, but to one because of the other, it belongs more to the cause.
• Sensible cases: hot said of fire and of air around it, air hot because of fire, so fire hotter; sweet of sugar and coffee, coffee sweet because of sugar; salty of salt and French fries.
• Logical case: known is said of premises and conclusion, but of the conclusion because of the premises; so premises are more known (otherwise you would not use them to prove).
• Natural-philosophy case: a pole and he push you off a cliff; both pushed, but the pole only insofar as moved by him, so he is chiefly responsible (you do not punish the pole). So the unmoved mover is more the mover than the moved mover, “very important in natural philosophy.”
• Application: good/desired/wanted is said of the end (health) and of what is for its sake (medicine), but of the means because of the end; therefore the end is more good, more desirable.
• Further application (an earlier objection recalled): if I love your children because I love you, I love you more; if I love my neighbour by charity because I love God, I love God more. Conversely, if I love my wife or candy more than God, I am not loving them because I love God.
• Aside, on wits: Hesiod’s threefold division (discover by oneself; learn from the discoverer; neither, “useless as far as knowledge is concerned”) found in Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics), Thomas, St. Basil, even Machiavelli; his version: wits (Aristotle, Plato), dimwits (learn from the wits), nitwits; he subdivides dimwits into those who know who the wits are and those who do not, calling himself an “upper dimwit”. Church parallel: Augustine discovers about the Trinity, others learn from him, others have simple faith.

8. The three kinds of goods and the weight of human life (“healthy, wealthy, and wise”) #

Point: the Socrates-Athenians disagreement is about all human goods and the very end of life, and the “each to his own” answer is now closed off.

• Aristotle refers to the disagreement in many places, most fully in Politics VII: philosophers vs. most men; most men act as if goods of body and outside goods were greater.
• Greek division: goods of the soul, of the body, exterior (outside) goods. Aristotle: all know these three, all agree we need some of each, they disagree about which are better.
• “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” (order set by rhyme and alliteration; he guesses Benjamin Franklin): health = body, wealth = excellence of outside goods, wisdom = soul.
• Sign that everyone recognises the three: laws about each. A student first says there are no laws about goods of the soul; he counters with Massachusetts schooling to sixteen and laws against robbing, stealing, murder (discouraging vices); health laws (closing a restaurant for cockroaches, medical licences); outside goods (driver’s licence, commerce, taxes). Political debates likewise: education, health/vaccines/insurance, economy/jobs.
• Everyone needs some of each: clothing, chair, food; health and strength at least to raise food to the mouth; a little courage and moderation; a little smarts to keep money (“a fool and his money”).
• Two consequences of ranking the goods: (a) the whole life is weighted: aim at as much as possible of the better goods and the minimum of the others needed to get or keep them; (b) more fundamental: since the end is better than what is for its sake, the end of human life must lie among whichever goods are better, body/outside “down here” or soul “up here”. So this is not a disagreement like chicken vs. steak or licorice vs. chocolate, but about all the goods of life and its end.
• The false answer, “if you love those goods more, go for them, Socrates; we love these more”: a student says it makes better depend on wanting; he agrees: it says better for Socrates because he wants more, better for Athenians because they want more, which, by the reasoning of the class, is excluded. The Athenians “are caught” and must give a reason; Socrates “has almost all the reasons on his side.” Aside: “It’s too soon, people say… all this liberal thought.”

His words #

• the good is what all want (desire): first definition, by the effect; “want” native English, “desire” Latin.
• good as known: the fuller account of the cause of desire, from Thomas on the causes of love.
• if-then / hypothetical / conditional statement: compound of antecedent and consequent; true when the consequent follows necessarily.
• gooder, more good: his coinage for “better”.
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics].
• the end is better than what is for the sake of it: the most basic general statement about better.
• “on account of which, more so” (propter quod unumquodque et illud magis): if the same belongs to two things but to one because of the other, it belongs more to the cause.
• unmoved mover / moved mover: the pole and the pusher.
• goods of the soul, goods of the body, exterior (outside) goods: the Greek threefold division.
• wits, dimwits, nitwits (upper dimwit): his rendering of Hesiod’s threefold division.

Texts #

Read in class

• None read verbatim; he paraphrases Aristotle, Physics I (confused before distinct knowledge) and Politics VII (three kinds of goods, agreement and disagreement).
• Verified handouts worked from (not named in transcript): “A Note on Practical Philosophy” p. 9; “What Is Good & What Is Better - The Order of the Discourse” p. 4; “Pride as a Cause of Error” p. 8.

Mentioned

• Plato, Euthyphro (the before/after question); Plato, Apology (Socrates examining Athenians on which goods are better).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa, treatise on love, second article on the causes of love (knowledge as cause).
• Aristotle and Thomas, propter quod unumquodque et illud magis (locus not given).
• Hesiod’s threefold division; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics; St. Basil; Machiavelli; Augustine on the Trinity.
• Charles de Koninck (remark on modern philosophy).
• Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (example).

His questions #

• Is it good because you want it, or do you want it because it’s good? Wanted because good; the good is the cause of desire (by induction).
• How can something be good and not desired? Because the cause of desire is the good as known; ignorance (caviar, Romeo before seeing Juliet).
• How is it that the bad is sometimes desired? Deception by likeness (mushrooms) or incomplete knowledge (delicious poison).
• Is something better for you because you want it more? No: it would follow that something is good because wanted, which was excluded.
• Does the truth of an if-then statement depend on the truth of its simple statements? No; on whether the consequent follows necessarily from the antecedent.
• Is something sweeter because it’s whiter? No, since it is not sweet because it is white.
• In general, what is better? The whole than the part; more basically, the end than what is for the sake of it.
• If the same belongs to two things but to one because of the other, to which does it belong more? To the cause (fire/air, sugar/coffee, premises/conclusion, pusher/pole).
• If I love my neighbour because I love God, whom do I love more? God.
• Are there laws concerning all three kinds of goods? Yes (schooling and criminal law; health codes and licences; commerce, taxes), a sign all recognise the three.
• What’s wrong with “go for the goods of the soul, Socrates, we’ll go for ours”? It makes better depend on wanting more, which is excluded; the Athenians must give a reason.