The Great Good (Summum Bonum), Morality, and Joy
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The Great Good (Summum Bonum), Morality, and Joy
A topic of debate among those who study ethics is relativism. Is there a moral code or summum bonum for everyone? Is there a great good that encompasses every human being, a summum bonum that is the same for each individual? Essentially, are morals relative or absolute?
My take:
There is one absolute summum bonum that should govern moral behavior for man. However, the path to reach that great good is relative to each individual.
Aristotle reasoned that the one goal man has always sought for, as his ultimate end, is happiness. In taking that process of understanding a step further, one comes to understand that humanity's greatest good is, in fact, joy. All else should be a means to that end. Joy, being an emotional state, carries with it the feelings of lasting happiness, peace, contentment, selflessness, and other unique positive feelings. It is an inner feeling of rightness, transcending the happiness spoken of by Aristotle. Achieving the summum bonum, or life's greatest good, is the result of turning one's potentialities and purposes into actualities. Similar to Aristotle's theory of self-realization, when one fails to follow the path to achieve the summum bonum it creates dissonance which produces the antithesis of joy: the emotional state of misery.
To realize the summum bonum, one takes the beliefs one has and acts on them. Potential, then, is the true ideology of an individual. It is the sum of beliefs and knowledge one has, the core essence of one’s true self. Turning that potential into actuality is acting in accordance to that ideology, therefore creating harmony between belief and action. This results in the achievement of the summum bonum.
Socrates submitted the supposition now identified by the phrase “know thyself.” In essence, this theory states that an individual only encounters difficulty because they do not know themselves, they do not know their conscious or unconscious self, their limitations, abilities, motives, true nature, and the entire range of their personality. Socrates expounds further on this idea by asserting that virtue is knowledge. His claim is that no one will consciously choose to do what is immoral, for a wrong action will inevitably harm oneself and others. The more an individual knows of himself, the less wrong he will do. Furthermore, Socrates states that virtue is happiness, meaning that a man who is acting rightly is acting for his own good, resulting in happiness.
Similar to and expanding on this idea, one must know one’s true ideology. If an individual does not know or understand what they believe or know, how can one act in accordance to that belief or knowledge and reach the summum bonum? In essence that person is amoral, being unable to distinguish between right and wrong. Therefore, knowledge of one’s true self is virtue and virtue is joy (the great good or the summum bonum).
- wanabe
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I'm curious, what you think that is.Locke wrote:There is one absolute summum bonum that should govern moral behavior for man.
I agree. It seems to me though, that this is an internal struggle. Since it is an internal struggle; on a practical level morality is subjective when expressed towards others. In other words We both may agree that killing is wrong, but we may have different solutions to the problem. My way of dealing with the problem, you may consider immoral in some other way. In short, morality is just as much about ones internal perception as others perception; a two way street.Locke wrote:However, the path to reach that great good is relative to each individual.
You say essentially that: knowledge<=>virtue<=>happiness.
If this is true, then it seems that one could think ignorance is bliss. A non-virtuous person wouldn't know any better. An evil person could be happy serving his own desires.
It is my personal belief that: knowledge<=>power. How one uses that power is a separate issue.
If one uses their knowledge(power) to(and does) promote good for the greatest number of others then they are moral. One does not have to know their true ideology, as that can change, I don't think it should be static.
I look forward to discussion with you.
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Knowledge is virtue by the fact that when one knows more about himself, i.e.- their own beliefs (prepositions considered to be true), then they will know how to act in accordance to those beliefs, therefore they will know what is moral. Aristotle taught virtue as an excellence of function. Knowledge creates an ethical excellence or moral virtue when one acts on the knowledge of their own belief, achieving joy. Therefore knowledge is virtue and virtue is joy.
In a pragmatic sense knowledge can be power. Power I assume as control or influence over others. Which idea can spawn quite a debate.
Morality, being subjective, is not necessarily static. As said, ideologies do change, and therefore so does the path to joy (the summum bonum).
- wanabe
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Locke wrote:There is one absolute summum bonum that should govern moral behavior for man....
Locke wrote:...The one absolute summum bonum is joy.
Locke wrote:...Moral actions then constitute any action that puts you on the path to the summum bonum or keeps you on the path to the summum bonum.
You say essentially that: knowledge<=>virtue<=>joy<=>one absolute summum bonum.Locke wrote:when one knows more about himself, i.e.- their own beliefs (prepositions considered to be true), then they will know how to act in accordance to those beliefs, therefore they will know what is moral.
I hate to repeat what I said before however, If this is true, then it seems that one could think ignorance is bliss. A non-virtuous person wouldn't know any better. An evil person could be happy serving his own desires.
Hedonism has been criticized by a number of modern authors and philosophers.
G.E. Moore argued that hedonists commit the naturalistic fallacy.
Ayn Rand, widely read as a modern proponent of ethical egoism,[9] rejected ethical hedonism:
To take "whatever makes one happy" as a guide to action means: to be guided by nothing but one's emotional whims. Emotions are not tools of cognition. . . . This is the fallacy inherent in hedonism – in any variant of ethical hedonism, personal or social, individual or collective. "Happiness" can properly be the purpose of ethics, but not the standard. The task of ethics is to define man's proper code of values and thus to give him the means of achieving happiness. To declare, as the ethical hedonists do, that "the proper value is whatever gives you pleasure" is to declare that "the proper value is whatever you happen to value" – which is an act of intellectual and philosophical abdication, an act which merely proclaims the futility of ethics and invites all men to play it deuces wild.[10]
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My supposition on the summum bonum is not hedonistic. It is not the philosophy “being guided by one’s emotional whims”. If one fully believes in the ideology of hedonism, then according to my supposition, that person will achieve joy by following hedonism. However, for an individual who criticizes a hedonistic ideology and, let us assume, is a follower of Christianity and fully believes in God and Jesus Christ and all the tenets that come with Christianity, in following the Christian ideology they will have joy. If one were to follow a hedonistic ideology and not believe it then disharmony would be created and it would not result in joy, but dissonance and misery. My ideology is not one governed by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Rather it states that morality is relative to the fully realized beliefs of individuals. Good and evil are relative.
Joy is a transcendent happiness, it is an emotional state. It carries with it lasting happiness, peace, contentment, and other unique positive feelings. Mere pleasure is not joy. This emotion is the result of moral action, or action in accordance to one’s fully realized and understood beliefs. I say that joy should govern moral behavior for man, not in a hedonistic sense, but in a sense that this is the “purpose for ethics” not a casual pursuit of one’s desires, for one’s desires and one’s fully realized beliefs do not always agree in harmony together.
- wanabe
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The majority of people are not logical, and do not need resonance though out their life. Wandering from one sense of immediate gratification to the other is sufficient for most people. Having a belief of ones beliefs(who you are) is simple, knowing ones beliefs(who you are) requires a great deal of work.
You have agreed in summary previously that:Locke wrote:My ideology is not one governed by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Rather it states that morality is relative to the fully realized beliefs of individuals. Good and evil are relative.
knowledge<=>virtue(now you say is relative to beliefs)<=>joy<=>one absolute summum bonum. So it seems to me that the absolute summum bonum is also relative to the person. As you say:
Joy can properly be the purpose of ethics, but not the standard.Locke wrote:...for one’s desires and one’s fully realized beliefs do not always agree in harmony together.
- Osawtell
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'Ethics' is the moral principles that govern a person's behaviour or the conducting of an activity.Ethics, in its most simple form, is just the theory and study of life's greatest good and the choices that are in accordance with that greatest good.
In essence the 'rules' by which you live.
'Morals' would be concerned with the principles of right and wrong behaviour - which lean towards what I think you are trying to define.
I would also question your main thrust of argument, that of the 'greatest good'. The ideas of Bentham best illustrate how the 'greatest good' can actually conclude with an action which is 'unethical'. For instance it could be argued that subjecting another racial group to extreme curtailment of civil rights would be in the interests of the 'greatest good' of the majority of people who are not in that racial group (the very justification used for the holocaust). But in so doing the action would be utterly 'unethical'.
Instead, if we look at 'Ethics' as being generalised rules of conduct. I think questions of the 'greatest good' become difficult in the extreme to justify on 'ethical' grounds.
In short, systems which do not factor in human value as inalienable (regardless of circumstance) quickly loose the 'moral high ground'. An example of this can be found in modern history with Guantanamo bay, torture at Abu Ghraib, and the treatment of 'enemy combatants' which are very clearly in contravention of the universal declaration of human rights, 1948 and the Geneva Conventions, 1949. But are 'justified' off the back of 'the greatest good'. Less emotive comparisons perhaps can be found in the prolonged house arrest of Aung Sun Su Kyi. Her incarceration was considered by the Burmese/Myanmar Junta/Government as for 'the greatest good' in order to ensure that their was no repeat of the near civil war that preceded the Junta's creation in 1962. but very clearly her rights as an individual were abused as where very many of the supporters of the Burmese pro-democracy movement who lost their liberty and lives as a result.
- Troglodyte
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Re: The Great Good (Summum Bonum), Morality, and Joy
Hey, so I'm dealing with this question right now. I have one correction to suggest and many questions.Locke wrote:
My take:
There is one absolute summum bonum that should govern moral behavior for man. However, the path to reach that great good is relative to each individual.
Aristotle reasoned that the one goal man has always sought for, as his ultimate end, is happiness . .....
Socrates submitted the supposition now identified by the phrase “know thyself.”
.
1. Aristotle actually didn't say happiness, he used the world "eudaimonia," -- which better translates to "human flourishing". A more long term idea of happiness than mere daily whimsy. He links his eudaimonia in Nichomachean Ethics to the The Unmoved Mover in his Metaphysics
As a side note, not correction --
Socrates and to an extent Plato, proposed theoretikos bios or "the contemplative life" as the possible path to Summum Bonum.
It isn't clear, to me at least, if the contemplative life was their ''path," or their desired 'End.' The Socratic method and Dialogues do not exactly make for precision interpretation.
Either way, the term summum bonum originated with Cicero I believe. And has been used both in philosophy and political philosophy.
2. Question -- I'm looking for someone to guide me on just the original terms used by these gentlemen, all the way up to JS Mills and beyond, to see how they each used it in their original context. As well as how it was translated at various points.
Can anyone point me to the original texts/translations on summum bonum . Closer to source, the better.
TX
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