Goodness and Justice: Plato, Aristotle and the Moderns

Abstract

Preface. Part I: Introduction. 1 The Role of the Good in the Ancients and the Moderns. 2 Science and Ultimate Good. 3 Disputes and Questions about Good. 4 The Aims and Limits of this Study. Notes. Part II: The Socratic Good of Knowledge. Introduction. 1 All Goods and their Socratic Rankings. 2 The Dispute with Gorgias: Is Rhetoric the Greatest Good?. 3 The Dispute with Polus about Power, Desire, and Good. 4 The Dispute with Polus about Justice and Happiness. 5 The Dispute with Callicles about Good and Pleasure. 6 Conditional and Unconditional Goods. 7 Socrates and Kant: Wisdom or the Good Will?. 8 The Conditional Value of all Goods on Virtue in the Meno. 9 Socrates and G.E. Moore on the Value of Knowledge. 10 Goods, Wisdom, and Happiness. Notes. Part III: The Good of Platonic Social Justice. 1 The Great Questions of the Republic. 2 The Functional Perfectionist Theory of Good. 3 The Application of the Functional Theory of Good to the City. 4 The Definitions of the Social Virtues. 5 The Role and Scope of Platonic Social Justice. 6 The Good of Platonic Social Justice. 7 The Application of Platonic Social Justice to Gender. 8 Conclusion. Notes. Part IV: The Good of Justice in Our Souls. 1 The Isomorphism between Social and Psychic Justice. 2 Platoa s Pioneering Analysis of the Psyche. 3 Psychic Justice and the Good of It. 4 Plato and Hume on Reason or Passion as the Rule of Life. 5 The Defence of Psychic Justice as Analogous to Health. 6 The Criticism of the Democratic Individual. 7 Which is Prior, Social or Psychic Justice?. 8 The Structure of Platoa s Ethical Theory. Notes. Part V: Platoa s Metaphysical Theory of the Form of the Good. 1 Opinion, Knowledge, and Platonic Forms. 2 The Imperfections of the Sensible World. 3 Forms as the Best Objects of their Kind to Know. 4 Forms as the Best Objects of their Kind and the Form of the Good as their Essence. 5 Function, Form, and Goodness. Notes. Part VI: Aristotlea s Criticism of Platoa s Form of the Good: The Breakup of Goodness. 1 Aristotlea s Arguments from Priority. 2 Breaking up Goodness: Aristotlea s Argument from Homonymy. 3 Aristotlea s Argument from Final and Instrumental Goods. 4 The Attack on the Ideality of the Form of the Platonic Good. 5 The Attack on the Practicability and Usefulness of Platoa s Good. 6 Putting the Fragments of Goodness Back Together: Focal Meaning. Notes. Part VII: The Good of Desire, the Good of Function, and the Good of Pleasure. 1 The Concept of the Good. 2 Different Orectic Conceptions of the Good. 3 Aristotlea s Functional Perfectionist Theory of Good. 4 Objections to Aristotlea s Functional Theory of Good. 5 Orectic, Hedonic, and Perfectionist Good. Notes. Part VIII: The Good of Character and the Good of Justice. 1 Is Aristotlea s Ethical Theory Circular?. 2 Did Aristotle have a Virtue Ethics?. 3 Aristotlea s General Analysis of Virtue and Functional Good. 4 Can Moral Virtue be Explicated by Functioning Well?. 5 States of Character and Practical Wisdom. 6 Aristotlea s Analysis of Justice: Not a Virtue Ethics. 7 Paucity of Practical Content: Justice and the other Virtues. 8 Summary and Conclusion. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

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