GOOD. - The good is the "perfection" of being: it therefore indicates the being that has reached its completion (ontological sense), and it expresses that by which a being is a principle of attraction for another being and the primary mover of the development or of the action of that same being (physical-teleological sense): being as cause or "end" of action.
The Romance languages distinguish between "good" (as a noun) and "good" (as an adjective), attributing to the latter term a predominantly moral meaning, while the former retains the more universal ontological meaning proper to Greek thought. In that thought, as in all philosophy, the dialectic of the good coincides, or is closely bound up, with that of reality.
In Plato the good constitutes the supreme principle and the ultimate point of reference for the grounding of the ideas and therefore of being: it is thus the most abstract and transcendent principle among all the formalities of the "intelligible world," and the Greek and Christian Platonic tradition identified it with God. For Aristotle the good must also be found in the things of this world, as being is: just as the universal good is the "end" of the whole world in relation to the absolute that stands outside the world, so the particular good is the proper and immediate "end" of each being — a good, therefore, that belongs to this world as the being that seeks it does. Hence Aristotle indicates the good as "that which all desire" (τὰ γὰρ δόν, οὐ παντ' ἐφίεται: Eth. Nic., I, 1, 1094 a, 3), a notion accepted by not a few later philosophers (for example, besides St. Thomas and many Scholastics, by Spinoza, Hobbes, G. E. Schultze, Schopenhauer...) but which must be rightly understood in the light of the fundamental principles of Aristotelianism. Such a notion does not at all express a simple psychological analogy, taken from the satisfaction of one who attains the good and delights in it, but indicates the profound reason that impels a being to move and to turn toward something other than itself, or to reach a state of itself that is other than its initial or its present one. For this reason Aristotle can say: 1) that God, the ultimate end of the universe, moves it "as beloved" (ὡς ἐρώμενον: Met., XII, 7, 1072 b, 1-3); 2) and that the very "form" proper to each being moves the being toward its development insofar as it is the immanent end (τέλος) of that being itself, which in its completed form possesses itself completely and its own reason (λόγος; cf. De Anima, II, 4, 415 b, 15). Thus the criticisms of the Neoplatonists against the Aristotelian notion of the good are entirely inoperative: when Plotinus affirms that the good is ἐφετόν because it is good and not vice versa (Enn., VI, 7, 25), he says no more and no less than Aristotle.
Thus the good is truly the first principle "for the sake of which" (τὸ οὐ ἔνεκα) something happens, and the moving and, so to speak, coordinating principle of the other principles of being, and particularly of form and of the agent, with which it often coincides (cf. Met., II, 2, 994 b, 9; see also H. Bonitz, Index arist., 250 b, 13 ff.). Hence the reason of being is one thing and that of the good another: being, as being, says only that it is "something"; the good, on the other hand, expresses being insofar as it is perfect and is "therefore" that which makes itself desired: "Unde manifestum est quod bonum et ens sunt idem secundum rem, sed bonum dicit rationem appetibilis, quam non dicit ens" (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 5, a. 1). And the good, precisely because it constitutes the "end" of being and is "that for the sake of which" it acts, corresponds to the mode and the actualization of this end and reaches being last (ibid., ad 1). Thus the relation between being and the good is dialectically inverted: "Sic ergo secundum primum esse, quod est substantiale, dicitur aliquid ens simpliciter et bonum secundum quid, id est in quantum est ens. Secundum vero ultimum actum dicitur aliquid ens secundum quid et bonum simpliciter...: et tamen secundum primum actum est quodammodo bonum, et secundum ultimum actum est quodammodo ens" (ibid., and cf. De Verit., q. 21, a. 1, ad 1: the whole discussion of St. Thomas takes its starting point from Boethius's problem in the De Hebdomadibus: whether created beings are to be called "good" by essence or by participation: PL 64, 1311).
One may say, then, from the strictly metaphysical point of view, that the good represents the moment of "transcendence" of being. Being is what it is and says only what it is: it is therefore in itself immobile, pure identity and closure upon itself. It is only under the aspect of the good that being expresses movement and communication of itself. From the Ps.-Dionysius (v.) the medievals took the principle: Bonum est diffuzium sui (cf. St. Thomas, De div. nom., 4, § 20: PG 3, 720) in order to show the fittingness of creation and of the Incarnation itself. To the good belongs the "ek-stasis" of itself — as the Neoplatonists said in their attempt to grasp the originating moment of the derivation of beings from the absolute Good — extending even to the non-being that was prime matter. This, with the necessary reservations, St. Thomas also admitted, thereby recognizing in the good a certain ontological primacy, itself of plainly Dionysian derivation (De div. nom., 5, § 1: PG 3, 816 B), over being "non per praedicationem sed per causalitatem" (De Verit., q. 21, a. 2, ad 2), insofar as, while being embraces only what is, the good extends also to what is not yet but "can" be, down to prime matter itself, and in this sense the Platonists, the Angelic Doctor concedes, may be right: "Loquendo de bono absolute, bonum habet amplissimam extensionem, etiam ampliorem quam ens, ut Platonicis placuit" (De Malo, q. 1, a. 2).
With this transcendental dialectic between being and the good, in which the Angelic Doctor for the sake of his creationist metaphysics draws near to Platonism, there is accompanied a predicamental dialectic of the good within the categorial structure of being, where St. Thomas develops Aristotle (Eth. Nic., I, 1906 a, 19 ff.) and shows how the good is found in each of the categories. (In I Ethic., lect. VI, ed. Pirotta, n. 81).
From this there already emerges the proper division of the good into the honest, the useful and the pleasant (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 5, a. 6): pleasant insofar as it satisfies the tendency of the subject, useful as a means to an end, honest is the absolute good of the rational creature with respect to the attainment of its ultimate end. This, of the spiritual being, may be called the second ontological sphere of the good, to which the first serves as foundation and which has as its constitutive element the judgment of human reason as objective norm and the notion of the right will as subjective principle in its aspiration toward the ultimate end. In this work the good man is, also along the metaphysical line, the man of good will: "Quilibet habens voluntatem dicitur bonus, inquantum habet bonam voluntatem; quia per voluntatem utimur omnibus quae in nobis sunt. Unde non dicitur bonus homo, quia habet bonum intellectum, sed quia habet bonam voluntatem" (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 5, a. 4, ad 3).
In modern philosophy, on the other hand, starting especially from Kant, the good has been severed from being and the norm of the good detached from the knowledge of being, so as to make of it an independent and irrational content. Taking his inspiration from the Kantian disjunction of reason, Lotze introduced the "philosophy of values" (v.), which has as its object what are today — with Dilthey's terminology — called the "sciences of the spirit" (Geisteswissenschaften), inasmuch as from a general point of view it seeks the consistency of the respective objects: in morality, in law, in the philosophy of history, in aesthetics, in economics, etc. In this inquiry of the philosophy of values, the most disparate tendencies have come to be delineated: Nietzsche preached the most absolute irrationalism of the "inversion of all values" with the will to power and the Herrenmoral; among the Neo-Kantians, while Windelband appeals to the postulate of God as the ultimate foundation of every value, Rickert develops values in pure immanence within the human sphere, in which the Ethik of N. Hartmann also expressly remains fundamentally atheistic; whereas for Max Scheler value is inseparable from the constitution and dynamism of the whole human person as a capacity for the absolute. Left-wing existentialism, with its ontological nihilism, has abolished the very problem of the good and of value (cf. J.-P. Sartre: "L'homme est une passion inutile" [*L'être et le néant*, Paris 1946, p. 708]); right-wing existentialism relies on intuition and faith and upholds the priority and transcendence of the good and of values (v. ESSERE; ETICA; FILOSOFIA; MORALITÀ; VALORI).