G OODNESS Plato and the Form of the Good

So far we have learnt that: Our function is reason To achieve this function we must act virtuously which we do by taking the middle path For both Plato and Aristotle this knowledge will enable us to reach the good – and that is our true self- interest

‘T HE G OOD ’ So what is ‘the good’? What is the ultimate goal we are striving for? We have already seen that both Plato and Aristotle believe the good is eudaimonia – to be happy, to flourish and to lead the good life. We should not follow hedonistic pleasures

H EDONISM V S. E UDAIMONIA : AN EXAMPLE A good example of the difference between hedonistic happiness and happiness in the sense of eudaimonia comes from the footballer George Best: In the early 1970s a room-service waiter came into his hotel room one morning. The footballer was in bed with one of the most beautiful women in the world, surrounded by thousands of pounds in cash that he’s won in the casino, drinking champagne from the bottle. The waiter looked at him, shook his head and said “George...where did it all go wrong? And it was true, something had gone wrong. From being hailed as the best footballer in the world, George Best had turned into an alcoholic playboy – he failed to fulfil his real potential. In a hedonistic sense he was happy, but in Platonic and Aristotelian terms he was not – he was no longer flourishing, he was not fulfilling his function and he was not doing what was in his true self-interest.

H OW D O W E U NDERSTAND W HAT I S T RULY G OOD ? For Plato we cannot understand what is truly good by studying this world, for example by looking at those we admire, or by looking at to past heroes and how they behaved Plato believed this world was an imperfect copy of another more perfect world, and that everything in this world had a more perfect form in the other world

T HE W ORLD OF T HE F ORMS Plato refers to this other, perfect, world as the WORLD OF THE FORMS or ideals, and we grasp these perfect ideals with our intellect, not through our senses. Plato offers a powerful and well-known analogy to help understand the difficulties of grasping the world of the forms, as he describes the journey of a man from a world of shadows at the bottom of a cave (which represents the everyday physical world) up through the cave out into the blinding sunlight (which represents the world of the forms)

V IDEO

T HE G OOD This journey, which we make through the tough and rigorous process of philosophising, eventually leads us to an understanding of the form of the Good. So for Plato, in order to flourish, our reason needs first to be in control of our soul, and it must then turn us in the right direction: towards pursuing the right ends. We must use reason once again to make an intellectual journey towards understanding the form of the Good

O NCE Y OU ’ VE F OUND THE G OOD Once you have grasped the good then it means you can never go wrong in life, or do wrong, such is the power of this moral compulsion. If people are unjust or behave immorally then they are ignorant of what is good. So Plato is arguing that it is through understanding the Good that we are finally able to flourish. However, this means that only a tiny minority of humans (namely a rare breed of philosopher) can ever be virtuous and ever be truly happy.