## Today
1. What is Goodness? A defense of Platonism
2. Greater Good, Lesser Good, Evil
4. Billy Budd -- What is to be done?
### What is goodness? Four options
- Plato: the good is the ultimate reality, source of goodness, truth, and beauty
- Manichee: Good and evil are equal and opposite realities
- Hedonism: Good is pleasure, evil is pain and suffering
- Nihilism: Good and evil are not really real
### Problem with Hedonism
If good is pleasure, evil is pain and suffering, why does some evil seem frightening, irrational, truly despicable?
### Problem with Manicheeism
If good and evil are equal and opposites, why are most things and most people mostly good? The "dark side" is not even close to half.
And why are all evil things corruptions of goodness?
#### Examples:
- The sharpest knife is the best knife; but also the most dangerous knife
- The most fun video game is engrossing, enjoyable, addicting; and also the most dangerous video game
- Wealth, intelligence, beauty, good public speaking are good things; but the most dangerous tyrant is wealthy, intelligent, beautiful, and good at public speaking etc.
- The devil was the highest angel
### A Puzzle about Platonism
If the Good is the ultimate reality, source of goodness, truth, and beauty, what is the Good's relationship to nature?
What is the Good's relationship to God?
### An argument for Platonism
All good things have goodness in common.
Some good things have nothing else in common but goodness. (Compare all red things, all equal numbers).
Therefore, Goodness is a real abstract property, and irreducible to any other property.
### Platonism
You are a Platonist about goodness if you think
- (a) goodness is real and
- (b) it is not reducible to anything in nature, such as pleasure.
From there, you can affirm religious Platonism (where God is the Good) or non-religious platonism (where the Good is ultimate).
### Nietzsche
> Where is God gone? he called out. "I mean to tell you! *We have killed him,* -- you and I! We are all his murderers!
>But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Wither do we move?... Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness?... has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? ...
> God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of murderers?
What is Nietzsche saying?
### Nihilism
>Unthinking men have a tendency to assume that some things are just naturally good and others bad... (121)
### Nihilism
If God is dead, then...
1. We are guilty of killing God
2. We have to become Gods to be worthy of the deed
3. All is meaningless and disorienting and dark ("Whither do we move? Away from all suns?") except what we create and impose on each other and ourselves.
### Nihilism
1. "Right and wrong" are fictions the weak impose on the strong
5. The only good is "all that enhances the feeling of power"
6. The only bad is "all that proceeds from weakness"
>The first principle of our humanism: the weak and the failures shall perish. They ought even to be helped to perish. What is more harmful than any vice? Practical sympathy and pity for all the failures and all the weak: Christianity.
### Billy Budd
### Billy Budd
- Claggart is dishonest, envious, malicious, grumpy, and intentionally slanders Billy as a mutineer with an aim to getting him killed.
- Billy is honest, guileless, obedient, cheerful, with a speech impediment, but (intentionally) punches Claggart and (accidentally) kills Claggart.
- What should be done?
### Legal v. Moral
>"In the light of that martial code whereby it was formally to be judged, innocence and guilt personified in Claggart and Budd in effect changed places." (55)
> "Clash of military duty with moral scruple... vitalized by compassion." (60)
- The martial law says Budd deserves death, and Claggart is innocent
- The moral law says Claggart deserves death, and Budd is innocent (or guilty of involuntary manslaughter)
### is everything *either* good or bad?
Consider that some things may be *better* than other good things, without the lesser good things being *bad.*
### Greater and Lesser Goods
| Bad | Lesser Good | Greater Good |
|----------------|------------------|------------------|
| Poison | grape juice | wine |
| Noise | pop music | symphony |
### Greater and Lesser Goods
| Bad | Lesser Good | Greater Good |
|----------------|------------------|------------------|
| Stealing | giving a little money away | giving all your money away |
| Lying | Telling part of the truth | Telling the whole truth |
| Breaking the law | Keeping the letter of the law | Keeping the spirit of the law |
### Discussion
* Your thoughts?
* Your questions?