• isaacmoris
    6
    I am trying to make a comparative study about Being and the notion of Good, and I don't know how to start this paper. I need help.
  • Pfhorrest
    4.6k
    We’ll need a bit more to go on than that, but the first thing that comes to mind is Plato’s “Form of the Good”.
  • tim wood
    9.3k
    Never mind what we need; you need more to go on. What, exactly, is the question? Can you find some way to own the question and make it yours in such terms as you can answer it? To start, don't look out but look in. Make a survey on a piece of paper - a list or even a collection of words - of whatever comes to your mind about being or good.

    "Being" is a gerund, an -ing word: think about that: it's a verb acting as a noun. What are both of those considered separately? And being itself? "Good," on the other hand, is an adjective, a descriptor of something else that's presumably good. What does it mean to say of something that it is good?

    Try defining in your own words without looking it up what "being" and "good" mean. Give an "is-when" definition. Write a genus and species definition. Write answers to the questions, "What does it mean for x to be a being, or to be being? Or to be good? What are these things when they are functioning as themselves?

    Do they themselves exist in themselves, or are they always grounded for their existence - if they exist - in something else? And, do they exist in themselves? In what way? Are they caused or are they themselves causes? Are they fundamental in some, or in any, sense? Or is there something that must exist prior to either for them to exist? Are they process or product or both?

    For most engines to work, they have to be started by the application of force from some external source. Your thinking on these topics has to get started, your brain the engine, your questions the initial force. Get busy! And be assured your instructor has little or no interest in any of your ideas on these topics, but rather what you do with them and how well you do it. Keep that in mind!
  • Gregory
    4.7k
    First there is void, then there is existence, then there is goodness, then there is truth, then there is beauty. That's the hierarchy of the transcendentals. The sum of to being, or rather, a being. Whether things share something common between them, or are more individual, is the nominalist debate. Nominalism is fun to think about
  • isaacmoris
    6
    Is good equated to Being?
  • Mikie
    6.7k


    Good in Plato's philosophy, you mean? And what do you mean by "being"?
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