← See the axis · The highest good
ArgumentThe only unconditional good
Pleasure, wealth, talent can serve the worst ends; only uprightness is good in every case. The true good is the one that cannot be misused.
Supports
Kant, the Stoics ·
- Let us review what we take to be goods: intelligence, courage, wealth, power, and even happiness itself. All have this in common, that they can serve evil: the cunning of the deceiver, the cold blood of the criminal, the prosperity of the tyrant make them harmful.
- A good that, misused, becomes an evil is therefore good only conditionally: it is worth something if the one who uses it wills well. What decides its worth is not the good itself, but the will that puts it to use.
- Now one thing alone stays good whatever the use, because it is precisely the rightness of that use: the good will, virtue, willing the just for its own sake. It alone cannot be turned to evil, for it is that through which all the rest becomes good or bad.
Therefore So virtue alone has unconditional worth; and if the highest good is what is worth something without reservation, then it is moral uprightness, not pleasure or flourishing, that deserves the name.
How far does this reasoning convince you?
Not at all
Entirely
Deepenings
The Stoic argument for the one good
- The go further: a true good is what, in every circumstance, benefits the one who has it, and can never harm.
- Now health can soften, wealth can corrupt, pleasure can enslave: none of these 'goods' benefits for certain. Virtue alone always benefits and never harms, both its holder and those around them.
Therefore So, by this test, virtue alone is a good; the rest, health, wealth, reputation, is neither good nor bad, but 'indifferent' matter that virtue uses well or badly.
How far does this reasoning convince you?
Not at all
Entirely
Put to the test
Objection