BENE. — The good is the “perfection” of being: it therefore indicates being that has reached its fulfillment (ontological sense), and expresses that by which one being is a principle of attraction for another being and the primary motive of the latter’s development or action (physical-teleological sense): being as the cause or “end” of action.
The Romance languages distinguish between “good” as a noun and “good” as an adjective, assigning the latter term a predominantly moral meaning, while preserving for the former the more universal ontological meaning proper to Greek thought. In it, as in all philosophy, the dialectic of the good coincides or is closely associated with that of reality.
In Plato, the good constitutes the supreme principle and the ultimate point of reference for the foundation of the Ideas and therefore of being: it is consequently 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, like being: just as the universal good is the “end” of the whole world in relation to the absolute that lies outside the world, so the particular good is the proper and immediate “end” of every being—a good, therefore, that belongs to this world as does the being that seeks II. Aristotle therefore defines 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 s. Tommaso and many Scholastics, by Spinoza, Hobbes, G. E. Schultze, Schopenhauer...), but one that must be correctly understood in relation to the fundamental principles of Aristotelianism. This notion does not at all express a simple psychological analogy, derived from the satisfaction of one who attains the good and delights in it; rather, it indicates the profound reason that impels a being to move and turn toward something other than itself, or to attain a state of itself that is other than its initial or present state. 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 the being itself, which in its completed form fully possesses itself and its reason (λόγος; cf. De Anima, II, 4, 415 b, 15). At this point the Neoplatonists’ criticisms of the Aristotelian notion of the good become entirely ineffective: when Plotinus asserts that the good is ἐφετόν because it is good, and not conversely (Enn., VI, 7, 25), he says less, not more, than Aristotle.
Thus the good is truly the first principle “for the sake of which” (τὸ οὐ ἔνεκα) something occurs, and the moving and coordinating principle, so to speak, of the other principles of being, particularly of form and of the agent, with which it often coincides (cf. Met., II, 2, 994 b, 9; V. also H. Bonitz, Index arist., 250 b, 13 sgg.). The reason of being is therefore one thing, and that of the good another: being, insofar as it is 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 desirable: “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 manner and actualization of this end and comes to 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 of s. Tommaso’s discussion takes its point of departure from the problem posed by Boethius in the De Hebdomadibus: whether created beings are to be called “good” by essence or by participation: PL 64, 1311).
It may then be said, from a strictly metaphysical point of view, that the good represents the moment of being’s “transcendence.” Being is what it is and says nothing but what it is: it is therefore in itself immobile, pure identity and self-enclosure. It is only under the aspect of the good that being expresses movement and communication of itself. From Ps.-Dionigi (v.) the medievals took the principle: Bonum est diffuzium sui (cf. s. Tommaso, De div. nom., 4, § 20: PG 3, 720), in order to demonstrate the fittingness of creation and of the Incarnation itself. “Ek-stasis” of itself belongs to the good—as the Neoplatonists expressed it in their attempt to grasp the original moment of the derivation of beings from the absolute Good—even extending to the very non-being that was prime matter. This is something that, with due reservations, s. Tommaso also admitted, thereby recognizing a certain ontological primacy in the good, likewise derived in a distinctly Dionysian manner (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 does not yet exist but “can” exist, even to prime matter itself; and in this sense, the Angelic admits, the Platonists may be right: “Loquendo de bono absolute, bonum habet amplissimam extensionem, etiam ampliorem quam ens, ut Platonicis placuit” (De Malo, q. 1, a. 2).
This transcendental dialectic between being and the good, in which the Angelic, through his creationist metaphysics, approaches Platonism, is accompanied by a predicamental dialectic of the good within the categorical structure of being, where s. Tommaso develops Aristotle (Eth. Nic., I, 1906 a, 19 sgg.) 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 honorable, the useful, and the pleasurable (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 5, a. 6): pleasurable insofar as it satisfies the tendency of the subject, useful as a means to the end, and honorable as the absolute good of the rational creature in relation to the attainment of its ultimate end. This, in the case of spiritual being, may be called the second ontological sphere of the good, for which the first serves as a foundation and whose constitutive elements are the judgment of human reason as an objective norm and the notion of the upright will as the subjective principle in its aspiration toward the ultimate end. In this sphere, the good man is, even 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, by contrast, especially beginning with Kant, the good was severed from being, and the norm of the good detached from knowledge of being, in order to make it an independent and irrational content. Inspired by the Kantian disjunction of reason, Lotze introduced the «philosophy of values» (v.), whose object is what today—with Dilthey’s terminology—are called the «sciences of the spirit» (Geisteswissenschaften), insofar as, from a general point of view, it seeks the consistency of their respective objects: in morality, law, the philosophy of history, aesthetics, economics, and so forth. In this inquiry of the philosophy of values, the most diverse approaches have gradually emerged: Nietzsche preached the most absolute irrationalism of the «inversion of all values» through 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 within pure immanence in the human sphere, in which N. Hartmann’s Ethik also expressly remains, fundamentally atheistic; whereas for Max Scholer value is bound up with the constitution and dynamism of the whole human person as a capacity for the absolute. Left-wing existentialism, with its ontological nihilism, has suppressed the very problem of the good and of value (cf. J.-P. Sartre: « L'homme est une passion inutile » [*L'être et le néant*, Parigi 1946, p. 708]); right-wing existentialism relies on intuition and faith and maintains the priority and transcendence of the good and of values (v. ESSERE; ETICA; FILOSOFIA; MORALITÀ; VALORI).
BIBLI: H. Bonitz, s. V. in Index aristotelicus, Berlino 1870; L. Schultz, Thomas-Lexikon, 2ᵃ ed., Paderborn 1895. - For discussions of ancient and medieval philosophy, cf. E. R. Dodds, Proclus, The Elements of Theology, Oxford 1933; J. B. Lotz, Sein und Wert, Paderborn 1938; C. Fabro, La nozione metafisica di partecipazione, Milano 1939. - For a comprehensive exposition and critique of modern theories, V. S. Behn, Das Ethos der Gegenwart (Die Philosophie, 12), Bonn 1934; Th. Steinbüchel, Die philosophische Grundlegung der katholischen Sittenlehre (Handbuch der Kath. Sittenlehre, 1, 1-11), Düsseldorf 1938 (especially vol. 11); G. F. Klenk, Wert, Sein, Gott, Ihre Beziehungen wertphilosophisch und neoscholastisch geschaut, Roma 1942.