Today's soundtrack is Roy Wood: Boulders.
This morning, I'm reading chapter 6 of book one of Aristotle's Ethics, in which he criticizes Plato's idea of a universal good. Aristotle says that he is reluctant to make this criticism of the beliefs that his friends hold to, but feels obligated to, as "it would be wrong to put friendship before truth" (p. 32).
Aristotle says that there are three ways that a thing can be good: it can be intrinsically good, some quality of it may be good, or its relationship with something else may make it good. He says that it is not possible for something to be both absolutely and relatively good, since the implication of something that is made good through its relationship with something else (or a certain quantity of the thing) means that the absence of that relationship will make that thing not good or less good, which is not possible if the thing is good at its essence. "Therefore there cannot be one form embracing both the absolutely and the relatively good" (p. 32).
There is no single form of good; if there were, a single science could explore it. Good can predicate things in the categories of "(a) substance, (b) quality, (c) quantity, (d) relation, (e) time, [and] (f) space" (p. 33). A red thing is not made more red today by being eternally red; a good thing is not made more good today by being eternally good, and the really good is not better than the good, since if the good is less then really good, it is not actually good at all.
In conclusion, Aristotle says that ultimately "'good' is not a general term corresponding to a single form" (p. 34).
