The “Highest Good”

The “Highest Good”

The highest good is an English interpretation of a Latin expression Summum bonum acquainted by Cicero a Roman philosopher. It was introduced to be equivalent to the image of the good in the ancient philosophy of the Greek. The statement was perceived as being a termination in itself and still contains other goods (Silverman, 2014). From the Christianity approach, the highest good is normally defined as the essence of the righteous or life led by joining spirits with God and in accordance with His laws. The term was used to describe the value and the ends that human beings tend to pursue.

According to Banach (2013), Plato doesn’t come up with a conclusive answer on what the highest good is but rather concludes it as the knowledge of the form of good this is because they make an object that is of knowledge understood by the knower. He insists that one must be familiar with the form of good before the knowledge of any other form of good can be of assistance. Therefore no one can really understand the other forms without the knowledge of what is meant by good. According to Plato all forms were related and organized in nested ranks with the highest form as the form of good, the final principle (Silverman, 2014).

According to Aristotle, the highest good is a recluse nucleus in which other goods are pretense upon for. For him, the highest good is a bliss that implies living well. This is because living well consists happiness and not happiness consisting of living well and therefore the highest good is a growing process in which happiness is achieved through deeds (Silverman, 2014). The highest good is not only acceptable but also represented as being accurate. It was his belief that only deeds can enable one to succeed in the goals and these goals are accomplished in a growing process. Among his considerations in determining the highest good were pursuing of honor, wealth or knowledge. This further implies that happiness and sociability are interconnected.

According to Hobbes, there is no summum bonum or greatest good but rather summum malum that implies the greatest evil. Hobbes referred to death as the greatest evil that everyone passionately wishes to avoid and therefore a need for a sovereign authority. Since useful things are low on supply, and happiness is a satisfaction everyone is in need of, people will tend to kill and enslave each other for and therefore a need for a sovereign authority to make laws to allow people escape from these awful conditions.

Kant states that the idea of the highest good is a condition where happiness is proportional to the virtue that follows as a result of the moral law (Banach, (2013). Kant depicts virtue as the merit to be happy and it would be good for happiness to be preserved for those worthy. Several questions have been asked to prove happiness belongs in the highest good for example why it should only be limited to those worthy of it? However, Kant’s claim of the highest good following from moral law is still questionable as it turns out that the connection between the two is more acquainted than what Kant is claiming (Silverman, 2014). Similarly, it is forthcoming that the basic focus of attention on Kant’s theory of single instances of action and choices but on a person’s eccentric features (Banach, (2013).

Utilitarian is among the most powerful and convincing approaches to standard ethics which is generally held as the view that as the morally right deed is the action that yields or maximize the most good. According to the utilitarian calculus, a deed would be moral when it yields the highest amount of pleasure and the lowest amount of pain. Mill developed and modified this theory, using the same utilitarian calculus focusing on the qualitative sense, he concluded that some pleasures were of higher value than others. According to Banach (2013), Mill implies that one determines what is right by assessing the outcomes of all relevant agents of various rules for a particular scenario (Silverman, 2014). From Mill’s perspective, happiness maximization should remain to be the goal of behavior and the standard of making decisions on how to act.

Unlike most of the philosophers, Nietzsche insists that happiness shouldn’t be the goal of standard behavior or decision making. He furthermore proceeded to state that human beings shouldn’t struggle after happiness but rather strive after work (Nietzsche, 2018). He takes happiness as a state of contentment with everything which is similar to how utilitarianism understands happiness as a desirable state of mind. Nietzsche ponders having satisfaction feelings as a goal is preferably a base thing (Nietzsche, 2018). He didn’t consider the feelings of satisfaction as a success of one’s life and that happiness is not encountered by default but rather achieved from hard work. According to his theory, since one has unsatisfied desires, they work in order to satisfy them and in the end enjoy pleasant feelings of satisfaction as a result when the goal is achieved. Therefore no one can withdraw from this cycle and choose to remain happy. Nietzsche’s opinion was that when the feeling of happiness is your immediate goal, you tend to avoid doing hard things that later costs you your happiness in the long run. (Nietzsche, 2018)

In conclusion, Nietzsche got it right on his view of highest good as in the current social setting there is no bliss ever after completing one thing as upon achieving that state of happiness we still find ourselves in need of something else. Therefore to stay happy we have to remain in the circle of dissatisfaction that leads to labor which leads to goal achievement, temporary satisfaction and back to dissatisfaction (Nietzsche, 2018).

References

• Friedrich Nietzsche on The Secret Ingredient For Happiness. (2018). Retrieved from https://medium.com/the-polymath-project/friedrich-nietzsche-on-the-secret-ingredient-for-happiness-643da473d919 pg. 1
• Silverman, Allan. Plato’s Middle Period Metaphysics and Epistemology, section 4.The    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2014. Pg. 1
• Banach, David. Plato’s Theory of Forms. St. Anselm College, 2013. Pg. 3