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Passages similar to: The Six Enneads — How the Multiplicity of the Ideal-forms Came Into Being: and Upon the Good
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The Six Enneads
How the Multiplicity of the Ideal-forms Came Into Being: and Upon the Good (19)
Are we to rest all on pursuit and on the soul? Is it enough to put faith in the soul's choice and call that good which the soul pursues, never asking ourselves the motive of its choice? We marshal demonstration as to the nature of everything else; is the good to be dismissed as choice? Several absurdities would be entailed. The good becomes a mere attribute of things; objects of pursuit are many and different so that mere choice gives no assurance that the thing chosen is the best; in fact, we cannot know the best until we know the good. Are we to determine the good by the respective values of things? This is to make Idea and Reason-Principle the test: all very well; but arrived at these, what explanation have we to give as to why Idea and Reason-Principle themselves are good? In the lower, we recognise goodness- in its less perfect form- by comparison with what is poorer still; we are without a standard There where no evil exists, the Bests holding the field alone. Reason demands to know what constitutes goodness; those principles are good in their own nature and we are left in perplexity because cause and fact are identical: and even though we should state a cause, the doubt still remains until our reason claims its rights There. But we need not abandon the search; another path may lead to the light.
The Republic
Book VI (505)
Do you think that the possession of all other things is of any value if we do not possess the good? or the knowledge of all other things if we have no...