Posted By crates on March 14, 2009

 Plutarch tells the following: An old man in the Olympic games being desirous to see the sport, and unprovided of a seat, went about from place to place, was laughed and jeered at, but none offered him the civility; but when he came to the Spartans’ quarter, all the boys and some of the men rose from their seats, and made him room. At this, all the Greeks clapped and praised their behavior; upon which the good old man shaking his hoary hairs, with tears in his eyes, said: Good God! how well all the Greeks know what is good, and yet only the Lacedaemonians practise it!

     I think of this story often.  The Greeks knew what was good, but only the Spartans practiced what was good.  I think of today and how situational ethics has seemed to undermined any absolute standard of what is right and what is wrong, and I cannot but feel some envy of the Greeks who as Plutarch claimed knew the right and the good.

          There many definitions of the word “good.”  I know that I really can’t add anything to the mountains that have already been written on this subject, so I wonder why I even talk about it.  Much of what I write on these pages is an effort to clear things up in my own mind…to help me straighten the tangles out.

          It seems to me that in order to have any concept of good one must proceed from a particular viewpoint.  The viewpoint that we all have, of course, is the human viewpoint…or at least that’s where all of our standards  begin, I think.  I find it difficult to believe that anybody knows anything about an ultimate good or evil which would be outside our experience.

     We tend to think of that which is good as being something that impacts our lives in a positive sort of way.  The absence of good is “not good,” bad or evil depending upon the severity of the impact.

   We can think of some things as being good if they impact us directly.  The satisfying of hunger and thirst, for example.   Being social primates, however, what is individually good is not always good for the group.  Many times it is, but a conflict can arise if the two are not compatible.

     From an evolutionary standpoint what is good could be considered as anything that adds to  increasing the number of our surviving offspring.  This isn’t necessarily incompatible to individual and social good, but it can be.

      The idea of what is good and not good, has expanded far beyond the individual and the group, of course.  It can be applied to the larger social group, the country, and even more inclusive, to the species.

    There has been a tendency to apply the concepts not only to our species, but also to other species, to the ecosystem, and ultimately to the Earth itself.  So it seems that what is good, and what is not good, can be applied to many different levels.  Ultimately I believe that these ideas began with the individual, and then became more inclusive.

Categories: nature
Tags: ethics, nature, Plutarch