Socrates asked “What is Goodness?” (roughly: work with me here, and yes I have some understanding of the Dialogues and the abstractions actually discussed). Plato told us it had an existence, since abstract ideas could not exist without some referent beyond the awareness of those who had not traveled out of the cave.
Aristotle defined it. He created treatises showing us in what Goodness consisted. Plants have an optimal form, and so too does the human animal, existing in a polis. Some plants shrivel and do poorly in bad soil, but that does not change their nature and telos. It merely makes them inferior, relative to what we can define clearly as the ideal, as what reflects “reality”.
2,500 or so years later, we have realized that what Aristotle posited as the ideal, or what Plato posited as actually existing in some weird other world, was actually culturally defined, and sculpted with words. Given other words, other “realities” open up.
OK, here is my take: it’s all in the questions. Bad questions lead to bad answers. And even very intelligent people ask bad questions. We are all limited by our experience–our culture, and the path we have traveled through it–and by our imagination.
Here is the correct question, which we are NOW in a position to ask: “what is the goal of the concept of Goodness”?
This question does not presuppose some world beyond the senses where “Goodness” exists in some way. It does not presume to tell us in what Goodness consists.
Rather, it asks an eminently practical question: what the fuck do you want, grasshopper?
Is it not obvious that abstraction exists in support of concrete emotional realities? Do we not think to further emotional ends?
Logic is all about ends and means. A mean which leads demonstrably to a desired end is rational. A mean which does not is irrational. This basic thought process connects abstraction with reality, with the real world as it is lived, with our lives.
The concept of Goodness is very simple. It is a heuristic device to guide decision making in the service of furthering qualitative growth, both for individuals and cultural/social orders.
We can create words to describe what we mean by qualitative growth, but we need to grasp–GROK, to borrow an invented, useful word–that what we truly want is the equivalent of “one hand clapping”; or, as I have put it elsewhere, of “THAT”.
Dialogue can collapse. Words can fail us. But we do not live through words, do we? Watch the clouds fading in the sunset. Go out on a muggy, close night, and watch the moon, and feel the life around you. Can we integrate that to a Platonic dialogue? No.
Look your lover in the eyes and tell her you love her without a word.
My recollection is that Wittgenstein said “Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, muss man darueber schweigen.”
Ponder a room full of emotion. Ponder a man and a women, just after an argument, or perhaps just after love making. What can they say, now? What is left?
Can we not see a room FULL of things that a poet might render, but which cannot be reduced to “reason”, and which are nonetheless quite real, quite relevant?
Oh, when I see THAT, it doesn’t get posted here; only perhaps a small shade, on occasion, and through translation.
But the Greeks–and here is my point, and by which I mainly mean Plato and Aristotle–did not leave room for “that”. Their world was one of definitions, of words. Socrates himself, I think, seems to have well understood that words do not a life make–which is why he left none.
But for my part, I would like to reiterate my question: “what is the goal of the concept of Goodness”?
We can obviously continue this: what is the goal of the concept of Justice? What is the goal of the concept of Arete?
We can define what the goal is, and then apply EMPIRICAL means to reconcile our goal and means.
It is precisely the great crime of Leftist practice and ritual to have abandoned this basic relationship, and to have embarked on a profoundly anti-rationalist, anti-humanist agenda.
All of the errors on display relate, I think, to the idea of “Is-ness”. “Goodness”, as a concept, is not a thing. It does not “exist”. The concept, itself, is mutable–meaning whatever any given speaker chooses–but it becomes useful when we ask for what it is intended, and how we might best pursue that end. In some important sense this makes ethics “scientific”.
As I suppose I should say from time to time, I have no opposition to science, per se. I oppose, rather, people who ABUSE the scientific method for personal gain. Such gain can of course include research grants, but more generally it includes the protection of scientifically indefensible biases.
Hell, I’ve been drinking a tad, but hopefully this is useful to someone. Certainly, it has been useful to me.
Edit: when I say a tad, read at a minimum 8 ounces of 100 proof. I’m actually on the mend. I am making my peace with what I need to make peace with, but for now I am continuing old habits.