Goodness

Most of us want to be good, but it is much harder to be good than it is to be bad or indifferent. Becoming good takes work! What is good? What is good for you? What is good for others? Is there anything that is universally, objectively good, or is good just a subjective and relative term?

The Greek philosopher Plato was an eager seeker after good. He believed that there are two different worlds: the unstable world of things, and the permanent world of disembodied ideas. Since goodness is a rare commodity in the unstable world of things, it must truly exist somewhere beyond the world. This world could not exist, however, without “The Good,” for Plato believed it to be the source of all truth. He compares it to sunlight. Light is not the thing that is seen, but we cannot see without light.

Plato’s philosophical light cast a very long shadow on Western thought. Plato continues to maintain his grip on our minds, individually and collectively. His influence and its lasting effects cannot be overstated. Alfred North Whitehead wrote: “the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” There is, of course, more corners in our world than only the West. Every world culture has its own definitions of what goodness is, but a remarkable number of these parochial definitions are derived from Plato’s Form of the Good, or “the idea of the good.” Thousands of years ago, all of southern Europe and all of the ancient Near East was conquered by Alexander the Great. Alexander's boyhood tutor was Aristotle. Aristotle's teacher was Plato. Plato absorbed wisdom from Socrates, a man who was sentenced to death for revealing the citizens of Athens that they were not nearly as clever as they thought they were. Although Socrates believed that it is hard to determine precisely what is true, Plato and his protogee Aristotle wrote lots of words in an effort to define truth. Their definitions are plausible and convincing. They were venerated as incontrovertable truth until, much later, they were revealed to be pure baloney. Objective truths (but not higher truths) emerged only after the musings of Plato and Aristotle were dismissed. The Age of Enlightenment, as well as its offspring the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, revolutionized our world by wiping the slate clean and going back to square one. Facts that are experimentally reproducable are much more useful than beautifly crafted, but unprovable theories concocted in an ancient Grecian ivory tower. Science surmounted the Platonic stumbling block. Surprisingly, most of the world's religious and ethical systems have not yet abandoned Plato.

Plato described “the idea of the good” his book The Republic. Good is a perfect, eternal, and changeless Form that exists outside of time and space. Good people and things get their goodness only from the Good. Forms can be understood, but not touched. Only the immortal soul (the existence of which is not universally accepted) can apprehend them. The soul is likened to the ethereal, disembodied Forms; immaterial and eternal, and therefore immortal. Plato states that the “Form of the Good” enables us to comprehend difficult concepts like justice. Knowledge and truth are important, but Good is much more important. Justice, truth, equality, beauty, and every other admirable quality is derived from, and indebted to, the pristine and irreproachable Form of the Good.

Plato influenced the future courses of Western and Near Eastern belief systems that define good in spiritual, rather than secular terms. Neoplatonist philosophers like Plotinus and Porphyry contributed to the formation of early Christian doctrine through theologians, primarily Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo (a reformed Manichean). Augustine compared received proto-Christian, meaning principally Grecian learning, to the Gold out of Egypt which the Israelites permanently borrowed from their Egyptian neighbors just before the fled from captivity. Platonic philosophy is an addiction that is hard to break, but all that glitters is not gold.

If evil exists as something, or someone that exists apart from a good God (or gods) then evil can be defined as the natural enemy of good. Conflict or enmity between good and evil is called dualism. The portion of this website titled “The Bad” refers to a few religions that are very dualistic. Zoroaster consolidated ancient Persia’s pantheon into two gods, good Ahura Mazda and evil Angra Mainyu. This system dualistic belief system heavily influenced an early variant of mainstream Christianity, Gnosticism. Gnostics believed that stuff, matter (including our own bodies) are irredeemably corrupt. Goodness, therefore, can only exist as a disembodied entity, similar to the platonic Form of the Good.

Gnostics believed (and modern variants of Gnosticism continue to believe) that matter is bad. Goodness can only be obtained by completely renouncing this present world and every flesh bound inhabitant of this world. In 3rd-century Persia, Manicheism (the first cousin of Zoroastrianism) taught that reality is a struggle between the good, ethereal, spiritual world of light and the evil, debased, material world of darkness. During the Hellenistic era and beyond, Neoplatonists revived the Platonic notion that evil does not exist. Evil is merely the absence of good, so words, acts, and deeds are only evil because they are imperfectly good. Islam, a belief system that first arose within Plato’s extensive sphere of influence, also believes this.

Western conceptions of good became less pagan and philosophical as Christianity began to infiltrate the declining Roman Empire. Both Jewish and Roman authorities persecuted professed Christians, a growing minority of the empire’s population. This persecution began in Rome under Rome’s fifth emperor, Nero in 64 AD. In 250 AD Emperor Decius extended his persecution to the entire Roman empire.

Constantine I was familiar with Christianity from his early youth and nurtured its spread it throughout his life. As emperor, he ended the official persecution of Christians in 311 AD. Constantine’s nephew and succesor Julian (the Apostate) renewed hostilities against Christians during his brief reign, but in 380 AD Christianity (as defined by the Nicene Creed) became the state religion of the Roman Empire. Church and state were now united, so the church became wealthy, powerful, and soon, incontrovertible. Its pronouncements on what was good and what was evil could not be questioned. They were equal to, and frequently greater than the authority of scripture. Anyone who objected was branded a heretic. A formerly persecuted apostolic church now became a persecutor. Apostolic power was maintained and vigorously exercised for the next thousand years, but the nonbiblical ways that this power was deployed fueled the embers of a smoldering resentment that errupted into flame during the Protestant Reformation.

Longstanding greivances regarding questionable, nonbiblical Roman Catholic doctrine by inquiring Catholic priests and theologians became the pretext for many ambitious secular authorities to purloin Roman Catholic assets. Portions of Germany declared their independence from the papacy in the wake of Martin Luther‘s stubborn insistence that Christianity should be based solely upon Christian writings ("Sola scriptura," Latin for "by scripture alone'"). An increase in the number of people who could read and the introduction of movable type fanned the flames of Protestant dissent. The Bible was translated into languages every literate laymen could understand. The aftermath of this breakthrough can be compared to the Day of Pentecost as described in the 2nd chapter of the Book of Acts, verses 6 through 8:

Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?

A multitude of Protestant denominations were founded in the immediate wake of the Lutheran Protestant Reformation. Each of these groups endeavored to restore Christianity to what they beleived to be ts original, pristine, Book of Acts condition. The Pope of Rome was no longer the exclusive bridge between heaven and earth, between God and humanity. Reformers agreed with Martin Luther: salvation is acheived by faith in Christ alone and not by our righteous deeds. Most of the dissenters persisted in believing in the immortality of the soul, a nonbiblical concept.

Renaissance Spain and Portugal waned as effective defenders of the Roman faith after having depleted the New World of its more easily plundered precious metals, then spending it. The Protestant English, Dutch, and nominally Catholic French took the lead in a global land grab that motivated more lubberly European powers like Germany to scramble for table scraps. Profit was the motive, and military power was the means. Missionaries in pursuit of unearthly treasure followed the merchant-adventurers. These reaped greater or lesser harvests of souls because some mission fields were more fertile than others. No corner of the world was exempted. Even xenophobic Japan briefly opened a window on the West. It closed this window in the early 17th-century, fearful of a breeze that seemed to threaten their xenophobic style. American-style Gunboat diplomacy eventually opened the window again.

Colonialists, whatever faith they may have professed, deluded themselves into believing that their conquests improved the lives of the conquered. Rarely, lives were improved. In Colonial India, young Indian widows were protected, by law, from having to perish in the flames of their late husband’s funeral pyre.

European conquerors and colonists were ostensibly Christians, but much profit was gained by freighting human chattel to an underpopulated and understaffed New World and subsequently working their slaves fingers to the bone.

The European nations from which Conquistador and colonist departed possessed their own historical form of slavery; serfdom. The burdens born by the peasantry varied in weight. When the burden became too great, it was regarded as oppression, a provocation to revolt, or to immigrate, or to endure. Revolutions succeeded (The United States in 1775-1783, France in 1787-1799, Haiti in 1791-1804, Russia in 1905-1917, Mexico in 1910-1920, China in 1946-1949, Cuba in 1953-1958) or failed (practically every nation on the European continent in 1848). Wherever a new order displaces an old, the new eventually devolves to resemble its predecessor. It was a Frenchman who authored the epigram “”plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (“the more things change, the more they stay the same”). It was a Hebrew who once observed that “…there is no new thing under the sun.”

What a privileged minority might regard as rightful, or “good” for its self-interest the majority may regard as being evil. Those standing on the tippy top of the heap stand above politics. They cannot be voted out of office. In the Western world this exclusive clique has maintained an ironclad grip on power ever since Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor more than 1,200 years ago. The rising economies of the East doubtless possess, or will soon come to possess, similar dynasties. Conspiracy theories abound that claim to know who, or what it is that ultimately orders the affairs of this planet. Truth, however, is easy to determine by examining pedigrees and economic trends. In the late Nineteenth-century, Friedrich Nietzsche declared (and his legion of devotees continue to declare) that what is good for the elite makes whatever lesser mortals may regard as being good irrelevant.

Religion and philosophy can both offer hope and consolation to the majority. Most world religions regard “good” as not the good of the few, or of the many, but the good of everyone. Amongst philosophers, the perpetual influence of Plato’s conception of “The Good” (with a capital “G”) persists as an alternative to “God” (a term that is also typically capitalized). The influence of Plato’s successor Aristotle has waned in the wake of the Scientific Revolution. Aristotle rejected Plato’s thesis that a proper appreciation and implementation of goodness must remain the exclusive prerogative of hyper-educated and transcendantly wise Philosopher Kings.

Aristotle’s system of ethics holds that people need only acquire a proper understanding of the way in which subsets of a supreme, overarching “Good” (friendship, pleasure, virtue, honor, wealth) fit together as a whole. Life is a continual series of choices. Proper nurture yields a discerning nature which enables us to decide which course of action is best. Received wisdom must be supplemented with experience, learning the proper course after having wandered into a myriad of improper byways (aka the “school of hard knocks”). Ideally, virtue ultimately becomes internalized, and not dependent upon an unreasoned adherence to rules and regulations.

The Age of Enlightenment, alternately the "Age of Reason” (with a capital “R”) elevated humani beings to a status that had been formerly reserved for God, or gods (with a little “g”). This 18th-century movement was foreshadowed by the 14th-century-plus Italian Renaissance. Mankind was exalted to become the “measure of all things”. Goodness became a commodity that could be philosophically defined, then scientifically implemented. Philosopher Jeremy Bentham wrote, “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do…”

The philosophical movement Bentham initiated, Utilitarianism, asserts that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong, Creating and sustaining this optimal condition, however, typically requires the establishment of corporate happiness by constraining its constituents. After Bentham, John Stuart Mill, sought to preserve individual liberty by curtailing the power of the corporate state, He wrote, “The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”

Socialism, a descendent of Utilitarianism, is a political, social, and economic philosophy characterized by the public, collective, or cooperative ownership of the means of production. Socialist political movements include anarchism, communism, and social democracy. Anarchism demands the abolition of the state which they believe is undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful. The state, as a manifestation of the collective will of the people, is completly impossible to create. Communism advocates common ownership of the means of production, no social classes, money, or state. Communists assert that capitalistic societies are divided into a majority, the proletariat (working class), and a minority bourgeoisie (capitalists) that reap profits because of their control of a nation’s farms and factories, the means of production. Social democracy stives ro operate within the context of existing economies by closely regulating it, and magnanimously aspires to enhance the welfare of the poor through income redistribution.

Late Eighteenth-century, German philosopher Immanuel Kant energetically combated thinkers who had entirely removed divinity from Western philosophy.  To counter the skepticism of philosopher David Hume, he wrote the “Critique of Pure Reason“. Rationalists (who regarded  reason as the chief source and test of knowledge) and empiricists (who believed that knowledge comes only, or primarily from sensory experience) were opposed to each other, Kant endeavored to effect a reconciliation, and is regarded by many as having successfully done so. His stature is equivalent to that of Plato, featured prominently at the top of (and throughout) this webpage about being good, and doing good, and wide variety of opinions regarding what goodness is. Immanuel Kant, whose impact on our modern world rivals that of Plato, is worthy to be the focus of the conclusion of this webpage. He was a peacemaker.

Perhaps Immanuel Kant’s best known philosophical concept is what he termed the categorical imperative. Kant believed that human beings occupy a special place in creation. Goodness, aka morality can be summed up in an ultimate commandment of reason, an “imperative”, from which all duties and obligations derive. An imperative is a proposition declaring a certain action (or inaction) to be necessary. Hypothetical imperatives, a less exalted source of motivation, apply to persons who want to attain certain ends. Scratching an itch, for example. A categorical imperative, much nobler, describes a mandatory, absolute, and unconditional requirement that must be obeyed in all circumstances. It is justified as an end, and not just a means of obtaining an end. It is best known to the world the way that Kant originally stated iit...