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Prescriptive

One good, or many?

On the axis: The highest good · a life

Is there a single supreme good that orders all the others, or plural and incommensurable goods that can conflict with no common measure?

Philosophers' positions

Plato

inferableMajor
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Justification

The sovereign good is likeness to the divine through contemplation of the Good and the justice of the soul, a moral perfectionism in which a life ordered by virtue is worth choosing for itself. A dimension remains, since this life of the just soul is presented as the happiest, with pleasure kept subordinate and deceptive.

Republic, IX, 580a-588a · Theaetetus, 176a-b

Anchors: Plato · Berlin