g0cardz wrote
u r welcome
i'm gonna have a BA in philosophy once this semester is over.
here's what i go by when i think about good and bad:
On Aristotle's view plants and animals are cardinal examples of natural existents, because they have a nature in the sense of an internal causal principle which explains how it comes into being and behaves (Phys. II.1.192b32-3). For example, an acorn has an inherent tendency to grow into an oak tree, so that the tree exists by nature rather than by craft or by chance. The thesis that human beings have a natural function has a fundamental place in the Eudemian Ethics II.1, Nicomachean Ethics I.7,
The principle of perfection Aristotle understands good and evil in terms of his teleology. The natural end of the organism (and the means to this end) is good for it, and what defeats or impedes this end is bad. For example, he argues that animals sleep in order to preserve themselves, because "nature operates for the sake of an end, and this is a good," and sleeping is necessary and beneficial for entities which cannot move continuously (De Somno 2.455b17-22). For human beings the ultimate good or happiness (eudaimonia) consists in perfection, the full attainment of their natural function, which Aristotle analyzes as the activity of the soul according to reason (or not without reason), i.e., activity in accordance with the most perfect virtue or excellence (EN I.7.1098a7-17). This ideal is to be realized in both the individual and the city-state: "that way of life is best, both separately for each individual and in common for city-states, which is equipped with virtue" (Pol. VII.1.1323b40-1324a1).
Aristotle's perfectionism was opposed to the subjective relativism of Protagoras, according to which good and evil is defined by whatever human beings happened to desire. Like Plato, Aristotle maintained that the good was objective and independent of human wishes. However, he rejected Plato's own theory that the good was defined in terms of a transcendent form of the good, holding instead that good and evil are in a way relative to the organism, that is, to its natural end.
I personally prefer Socrates, although he never really touched much upon a definition of good.
As for Aristotles, I respectfully disagree that nature operates for the sake of anything. The argument begs for some sort of Great Designer, an entirely different discussion. I much prefer Popper's argument that nature can be neither good or bad, it is morally neutral.
But Aristotles was at least more convincing than Plato, who after taking Heraclitus' "Everything is flux," and positing that the only true good was the original Form or Idea, had to hold that the only good is that which does not change. . . which is to say that everything that changes is bad. . . which is to say, everything in the world is bad. Pretty silly position IMO.
But congrats on your BA. My wife, who's a professor of philosophy, tells me they're not too hard to come by.