Goodness and Justice: Plato, Aristotle and the Moderns

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 Plato'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 Plato's Ethical Theory.

Notes.

Part V: Plato'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: Aristotle's Criticism of Plato's Form of the Good: The Breakup of Goodness.

1 Aristotle's Arguments from Priority.

2 Breaking up Goodness: Aristotle's Argument from Homonymy.

3 Aristotle'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 Plato'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 Aristotle's Functional Perfectionist Theory of Good.

4 Objections to Aristotle'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 Aristotle's Ethical Theory Circular?.

2 Did Aristotle have a Virtue Ethics?.

3 Aristotle'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 Aristotle'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.