Short version of my answer:

A good person is a person who does good deeds.
Good deeds are those that are good-preserving: that, given good initial circumstances, produce only good consequent circumstances.
Good circumstances are ones wherein all appetites are fulfilled.

Long version of my answer here and the following three or four pages.

So no, if a person is in circumstances where he cannot bring about other circumstances, that does not disqualify him from being a good person, so long as the things that he does do don't make things worse, and hopefully make things better. (Where for 'better' and 'worse' see "appetites" and the link above).

Something is good whenever it performs its function well, when it does well compared to what might reasonably be expected of it. I find my computer good because it can do what I need it to do. It can’t hammer nails well, but that’s not a part of its functions, so it doesn’t make it any worse.

A good plumber is good at fixing the pipes. A good bus driver drives the bus safely and punctually. The word “good” has a definite meaning in each case.

So when asked what a good person is, we have to consider the function of a human being as such; something that would make any person good regardless of his chosen profession.

Now the task we all have in common as human beings is our dealing with our fellow creatures. We can do that well or badly depending on our disposition to make other people satisfied and contribute to their happiness. But just as the best plumber is not necessarily the one who fixes the most pipes, but the one who has the ability to do it, a good person is not necessarily the one who brings the most happiness. (A political leader is in a better position to do good or bad, but that doesn’t make him good or bad.) A good person is the one who is disposed to make other people happier whether or not he has the chance to do so. That is what the ancient Greeks called virtue.

"Good," to start with, is left undefined. — tim wood

As it should be, methinks, it being a transcendental conception, meaning it has no object belonging to it necessarily. Others similar being, i.e., possibility, existence, etc. Things are possible, things exist, things are good, but “good” cannot be cognized as a thing.

It follows that a man qualified by nothing but good in itself, and this good being undefined, is sufficient reason to suppose that to which it is assigned also be left undefined, hence the idea of a good man is unintelligible and the reality of a good man is self-contradictory. Rather, there is a man of good nature, or, a man that does good things, which experience can readily verify.

Or not......

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You're missing the important middle step of my three-step position, which is explicitly a synthesis of deontology and utilitarianism. I am anti-consequentialist in the same way that I am anti-confirmationist, which is to say that results do matter, but only in that they can show your process to be wrong, and the process is the important part. Bringing about good ends doesn't justify all means -- something with good consequences can still be the wrong thing to do -- but bringing about bad ends disqualifies any means. With the important point that it's the introduction of new bad ends that does the disqualification; merely failing to fix existing bad circumstances isn't a sign of bad deeds.

Exactly like how a valid argument will produce only true conclusions if you feed in only true premises, so if you get a false conclusion you know that either the argument is invalid or that the premises contained falsehoods. But getting a true conclusion tells you nothing; invalid arguments from false premises can still produce true conclusions.

So someone who does no harm is a good person. Someone who undoes preexisting harms is an even better person, but failing to do so is not bad. It's the difference between permissible and supererogatory.

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Or not.... — tim wood

HA!!! Good one.

The will is the ideal good, yes. Good without expectation of return.

There is an argument, or maybe just an interpretation, that if morality presupposes a will, and all wills are good, then every man who is a moral agent possesses a good will. If true, the good mark of a man can’t be that which is presupposed in him.

That being said, I’m more inclined to identify the good of a man by his respect for law, the prime facilitator of duty. Respect for law is not a presupposition, but a necessary condition for what follows from it. None of which will meet the criteria of a rabid consequentialist, nor the virtue ethicist.

I think my position is more clearly stated by expounding the analogy with epistemology in a way that asks us what makes a person epistemically virtuous, as in, what makes them a good thinker, a wise person, skilled at correctly forming their beliefs. I think that situation is much less controversial, and my position is that moral virtue is exactly analogous to it.

An epistemically virtuous person is not just someone who believes things that are true. Rather, they are someone who believes things because they are true, meaning that they employ a belief-formation process that is responsive to truth, such that not only do they believe something, and it happens to be true, but if it had been false they would not have ended up believing it. So someone is epistemically virtuous if they follow correct epistemic procedures, basically if they employ sound theoretical reasoning, in such a way that, most importantly, they only reach true conclusions to their inferences given true premises (their inferences are truth-preserving), and secondarily, better still but not necessarily, they tend to eliminate false premises and so narrow in gradually on the complete truth.

Likewise, a morally virtuous person is not just someone who causes states of affairs that are good (where this is defined hedonically, but with some technical caveats I won't go into to make it more analogous to empirical truth). Rather, they are someone who does things because they are good, meaning that they employ a decision-making process that is responsive to goodness, such that not only do they do something, and it happens to have good consequences, but if it had bad consequences they would not have ended up doing it. So someone is morally virtuous if they follow correct deontic procedures, basically if they employ sound moral reasoning, in such a way that, most importantly, they only bring about good consequences by their actions given good prior circumstances (their actions are good-preserving), and secondarily, better still but not necessarily, they tend to eliminate bad prior circumstances and so narrow in gradually on complete goodness.

FWIW, I consider moral virtue like this definitionally identical to freedom of will. Your will is what you think is the best course of action, which is identical to moral reasoning (even if your moral reasoning fails to consider anyone's feelings but your own; you're just bad at moral reasoning then, but a solipsist is equally bad at theoretical reasoning and for the same reasons), and your will is free when such judgements about what is the best course of action are causally effective on what actions you actually take (in contrast to cases where something else besides your best judgement ends up the cause of your actions).

A good man is a just man. Do justice though the heavens fall.

In a nutshell, a ‘good person’ in my view is someone who:

Chooses to be aware - with integrity, self control and patience
Chooses to connect - with kindness, generosity and gentleness
Chooses to collaborate - in peace, joy and hope...

Despite fear or threat of pain, loss, lack or humiliation.

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A.) Because of the quote: nothing can be considered good except the will, which is presupposed in the being of a moral agent. This must include the man, and even the mark of a man. The possession of a good will makes possible a man that does good moral things, but does not necessarily make him morally good for its own sake.

B.) Oh no siree bub!! Respect is very far from inculcated, by which I understand you to mean instilled from experience, or, taught. Rather, respect is the consciousness of the power and authority of law itself, whatever the content of the particular set of moral laws I simultaneously construct for myself and obligate myself to honor, such that no inclination whatsoever shall usurp such laws. One can never learn that; he must have it in him naturally, in keeping with his own consciousness.

All speculative moral philosophy, and therefore barely a step above personal opinion, of course.

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And ἀγάπη? The good man may be capable of justice, probably ought to be. But justice though heaven fall? God weeps - and you know what happened the last time He did? Are you our Noah?

By heavens they meant the sky. Various other versions, for instance in Kant, reiterate the notion but with other types of calamity.

“The true but somewhat boastful sentence which has become proverbial, Fiat iustitia, pereat mundus ("Let justice reign even if all the rascals in the world should perish from it"), is a stout principle of right which cuts asunder the whole tissue of artifice or force.”

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/50922/50922-h/50922-h.html

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I invite you, then, to offer a definition of the good itself, as a substantive noun. — tim wood

I have been disambiguating between different senses of the word "good". You are asking what is a "good man" in a way that sounds equivalent to asking what is moral virtue. I gave an answer to that in terms of "good deeds", which I defined in a way that I would say is equivalent to "justice": a virtuous person is one who does just actions. And then I defined what makes actions just, in terms of their relationships to the goodness of prior circumstances and consequences, but not in as simplistic a way as utilitarians would. And I defined good circumstances -- and here I have no other words besides "good" to use, so this is where I would apply that word without qualification -- as those in which what I called appetites are satisfied, which as I said is slightly technical language on my part, but which means more or less that pains are alleviated, including pains from lack of things, the alleviation of which is equivalent to pleasure.

So a "good" (virtuous) person is one who does "good" (just) deeds which are deeds that (at least) don't hurt anyone, or (better still) also soothe existing hurt.

He devoid of the Spirit of Conquest, who is honest with himself...who has gone beyond behaviorism, lost desire to achieve in a system that "giveth and taketh away." He who understands the bucket list will be overflowing when he dies, and makes peace with this while still young. He who doesn't understand what people mean when they talk of making an impact in the world. He who doesn't live for rewards (it's either all ends or all means, never a means to an end: he never treats others instrumentally and has a nuanced understanding of what this means). He who lets go with love. Dark triad doesn't apply to him. He's probably an outsider, unsuccessful by external validation.

Good deeds are poisonous if inner strife is too prevalent; to the extent inner harmony is absent, there is usually a desire to conquer, or make a dent in the outer world. So the good man has no desire to achieve or conquer, knows how much of anything is enough. Homeostasis is a paradigm for his psyche, not just the body. Achievement is a runaway, positive feedback system, which never knows when to stop, or what the endgame is. Then negative feedbacks operate in the nucleus of his mind, he never goes too far in one direction, is never one-sided. He holds some things sacred, sacrosanct, occult. He who can relax and do nothing, with no need for external stimulation. And much more.

rests on its own Ararat — tim wood

Oh man...a real wordsmith, I must say. William of Warwickshire ain’t got nuttin’ on that. Well....maybe a little. Here and there.

There is not the good? — tim wood

No, I’m guessing not. Mostly we work with “gifts of nature” as in skills or talents, and “gifts of fortune” as in luck or temperance, as representations of good, but there is no good to be cognized as good in itself.
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Sense? Nonsense? — tim wood

Sense, for sure, but not much to do with the predicates of pure moral philosophy. The statement “one who chooses....(x)....is good” in order to give “a meaning of good in each case” can only apply to empirical circumstance and responds to a hypothetical imperative for its precepts, for the presence of the very act of choice has already negated the mandatory obligation of law, which we know offers no choice at all. It is nonsense, on the other hand, to expect an imperative grounded in a mere precept, or inclination, to be the foundation of a moral constitution.

So sense/nonsense just depends on what exactly is under discourse, seems to me, anyway.

That’s actually pretty good.

What I've got from reading is that a long time ago the good man was he who brought home the bacon, the one who won, and so forth. That is, the good man was the man who did successfully. Failure meant that the man was not a good man - — tim wood

I find this quite troubling and quite honestly very typical for the present where we put victimhood on a pedestal.

Trying to do well yet failing to win or not to get the job when jobs are scarce has never been a sign of being bad. Not now, not in the past either. Bad in this way would be like a man "trying to stay sober and not hitting his wife and children". If one then "fails" in this 'test', gets drunk and beats the crap out of the wife and the children, this indeed would be considered bad. We wouldn't say the man "tried to be good, but failed, hence poor of him". This 'failure' is indeed totally different from not winning a competition and coming second.

We genuinely do demand some level of moral behaviour from people and don't accept 'failing' at this basic level of ordinary humane and moral interaction with other people etc. Just where we put this red line is the interesting question, which tells a lot about us and our society.

Culture dictates and good men obey.

Given the chance, does goodness require he do? — tim wood

Yes, having a disposition for something means that when the relevant circumstance occurs, the thing will occur. If you are disposed to catching a cold you are very likely to do so when the weather changes. The stronger the disposition, the more likely it will occur given the circumstances. A very good man will be very likely to do good when given the chance and an absolutely good man will do it with absolute certainty.

that good appears likely to be always conditioned on what they decide is good, which decisions tend to relativism — tim wood

No, good as in “a good man” is in no way relative. What a good plumber is, is not relative to what you happen to expect from a plumber. If you expect your plumber to treat your leg injury you are simply wrong in your perception of what his tasks may be. Likewise, a good man is not what you just happen to find good about a man. “Good” always means: that which makes a thing work the way it is supposed to.


There’s a difference between a good act and a good person. A good act I define in the utilitarian fashion as whatever produces more happiness than unhappiness. A bad man may very well, more or less by chance, perform good acts and a good man may be unlucky, but it is their vice or virtue, their disposition, that defines them as persons.

I am not sure "being a good man" is the intention of those who require that we be virtuous. Put another way, virtue hurts the person who would attempt such a thing. A person attempting such a thing cannot be sure if they or others will call them "good" at the end.
They will just decide stuff and live with the consequences. The Kantian appeal to universal good points to a form of life as perilous as what any saint would have to endure.

The good man exists only in inequality. The moment everyone is equal then the good person simply becomes person. The rich person becomes generous and so becomes good. The powerful become humble an so become good. The poor enjoy their meager meals and so become good. The weak don't gang up against the rich and so become good.

Goodness, it appears to me, requires an imbalance of power, wealth, beauty, etc. In fact we shouldn't aspire to be good because it is a tacit endorsement of extant inequalities. We should, instead, aim for equality.

There’s an irreconcilable difference between the Kantian notion of a good man and the one who emerges from Aristotelian virtue ethics. Since for Kant only the will can be good in itself, anything that subtracts from the purity of the will makes the person less good. The pure will wants to do something only because it is good and not for any other reason. If a person not only wants to act righteously out of duty but also enjoys doing it, his will is not pure, and he is not necessarily a good man. If someone hates doing what is right and almost feels sick when doing it, but still does it, that person, for Kant, is the ultimately good man.

I find this idea repulsive. Someone who hates mankind could then be good. The person who acts entirely without passion, obeying some self-made law like a pre-programmed machine would be good.

The Aristotelian good man enjoys doing what is good, and he has trained himself to feel pleasure when seeing other people pleased. The more he loves mankind, the more he feels the urge to act righteously and make people happy.

Doesn’t this also agree with our common sense?
A good mother does everything for her child because she loves the child, right?

All these references to philosophers aside, the way I look at it is that the good person walks a tightrope. The need to vouchsafe personal (including whoever one includes as family) safety against a greater principle of the Good is the obstacle course of Life.

I have not been a complete coward so far but I am no hero either.