The term ‘Good’ occupies a contested and multiply-valenced position across the depth-psychology corpus, ranging from its Neoplatonic identification with the supreme metaphysical principle—The One, which ‘radiates Beauty before it’ in Plotinus—to its Stoic articulation as the perfection of rational nature, to Nietzsche’s genealogical demolition of its apparent self-evidence. Plotinus situates The Good beyond Intellectual-Principle itself, as the fountain from which beauty and being alike proceed, a position that finds resonance in Augustine’s insistence that all things are good insofar as they exist, and that evil is merely privatio boni. Jung takes sharp critical aim at precisely this Augustinian-Thomistic privatio doctrine, arguing that its relegation of evil to a ‘mere diminution of good’ fails to account for the empirical reality of psychic destruction. The Stoics, by contrast, treat the good as the singular object appropriate to rational human nature, distinct in kind from ‘preferred indifferents,’ and characterize all goods as equal and complete. Plato’s dialogues stage the founding aporia: whether the good is identical with pleasure, with knowledge, with the kalon, or with something irreducible to any of these. Nietzsche historicizes all such claims, tracing ‘good and evil’ to power relations among ruling and subjected groups. The term is thus simultaneously a metaphysical apex, an ethical criterion, a psychological reality, and a genealogical artifact.
What is beyond the Intellectual-Principle we affirm to be the nature of Good radiating Beauty before it… The Good, which lies beyond, is the Fountain at once and Principle of Beauty: the Primal Good and the Primal Beauty have the one dwelling-place
Plotinus establishes The Good as the supreme metaphysical principle beyond Intellect, the very source from which Beauty and all being derive.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
all that have possessed themselves of The Good feel it sufficient: they have attained the end… All are seeking The First as something ranking before aught else
Plotinus distinguishes The Good as a self-sufficient first principle ranked above Beauty, which is only secondary, showing that the soul’s primordial movement is toward good, not beauty.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
To This looks all else that passes for good; This, to nothing… it breathes Intellect in breathes Life in and, where life is impossible, existence.
Plotinus describes The Good as the absolute and self-referential source from which Intellectual-Principle, Life, and all existence radiate without itself depending on anything else.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
‘good’ used of him is not a predicate asserting his possession of goodness; it conveys an identification… such self-awareness as good must inevitably carry the affirmation ‘I am the Good’
Plotinus argues that calling The One ‘good’ is not attribution but identity, and yet any self-aware assertion of that identity would compromise its absolute simplicity.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
evil has no substance or existence in itself, since it is merely a diminution of good, which alone has substance… it must necessarily be said that the being and perfection of every created thing is essentially good.
The passage expounds the Thomistic privatio boni doctrine—which Jung is ultimately to contest—wherein evil is defined as absence of good and only good possesses genuine being.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis
when therefore Basil asserts on the one hand that evil has no substance of its own but arises from a ‘mutilation of the soul,’ and if on the other hand he is convinced that evil really exists, then the relative reality of evil is grounded on a real ‘mutilation’
Jung exposes the internal contradiction of the privatio boni framework: if evil is psychically real in its effects, it cannot be adequately described as a mere absence of good.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis
those things be good which yet are corrupted; which neither were they sovereignly good, nor unless they were good could be corrupted… all which is corrupted is deprived of good.
Augustine articulates the ontological dependence of corruption on goodness: things can only be corrupted insofar as they possess good, so evil is always parasitic upon the good.
, Confessions, 397thesis
Intellection is not a primal either in the fact of being or in the value of being; it is secondary and derived: for there exists The Good; and this moves towards itself while its sequent is moved
Plotinus subordinates even intellective activity to The Good, which is the unmoved terminal point of all aspiration and the implicit standard by which Intellectual-Principle recognizes its own worth.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
A thing is potentially that to which its nature looks; this, obviously, it lacks; what it lacks, of its better, is its good… this better, good in its own nature, must be good also to the quester whose good it procures.
Plotinus develops a teleological account of the good as that which completes a nature’s potential, with form functioning as a participation in The Good itself.
, The Six Enneads, 270supporting
all goods are equal, and that every good is choice worthy in the highest degree and does not admit of relaxation or intensification… All goods are common to the virtuous, and all that is bad to the inferior.
This Stoic passage asserts the radical equality and indivisibility of all genuine goods, which are coextensive with virtue and shared among all who possess it.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987thesis
Whoever has the power to repay good with good, evil with evil, and also actually repays, thus being grateful and vengeful, is called good… Good and bad are for a time the same as noble and low, master and slave.
Nietzsche genealogically derives ‘good’ from the power-relations of ruling castes, showing it originally designated the powerful and capable rather than the morally virtuous.
, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887thesis
if God is only good, who is producing all the evil in the world?… it would be much more to the point to assume that the all-powerful deity was superior to good and evil
Jung, reading Nietzsche, argues that restricting God to goodness alone is psychologically incoherent and necessitates a conception of the divine that transcends the good/evil opposition.
, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939, 1988thesis
the morally good, is a different kind of value from the objects of our primary impulse… the good as a general principle of order or harmony connected with but transcending the natural values
The Stoic analysis shows that the morally good is categorically distinct from preferred natural advantages, emerging through rational reflection as a principle of order transcending mere biological appropriateness.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting
Socrates uses these premises, substituting ‘good’ for ‘pleasant’ to produce an absurdity… ‘for a person to do the bad, knowing it is bad [i.e. inferior], and that he ought not to do it, because he was overcome by good.’
Nussbaum analyzes the Socratic argument in the Protagoras showing that the identity of good with pleasure collapses under the logic of commensurability, making weakness of will unintelligible.
, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986supporting
the good is both sui generis and is also understood by analogy to the merely natural things… the rational nature of man is so special.
Inwood clarifies the Stoic position that the good, while analogous to naturally appropriate objects of impulse, is categorically sui generis because it is defined by and for rational nature specifically.
, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985supporting
the good is not the same as the pleasant, or the evil the same as the painful; there is a cessation of pleasure and pain at the same moment; but not of good and evil, for they are different.
Socrates demonstrates the non-identity of good and pleasure through the observation that they have different cessation conditions, establishing the irreducibility of the good to hedonic states.
, Gorgias, -380supporting
the indifferent for the sake of the good… when we kill a man we kill him or exile him or despoil him of his goods, because, as we think, it will conduce to our good
Plato’s Socrates articulates the principle that all action — even violent or morally questionable action — is undertaken for the sake of what the agent conceives as good.
, Gorgias, -380supporting
about the kalon unless he keeps his eye solely on the mark of the good… the beneficial is kalon, and the harmful is aischron
Hobbs argues that Plato subordinates the kalon to the agathon, making beneficial-to-the-agent the criterion by which all valuables including the noble are to be judged.
, Plato and the Hero: Courage, Manliness and the Impersonal Good, 2000supporting
both kinds of orexis are impulses to the apparent good. The difference is that boulêsis is to a correctly conceived good in the correct way and epithumia is to a mistakenly conceived good
Inwood shows that in Stoic psychology all forms of desire — rational and irrational alike — are directed toward the apparent good, differing only in whether the good is correctly or incorrectly apprehended.
, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985supporting
living pleasantly is good, but only if one lives in enjoyment of kala, of fine and honourable things… not everything pleasant is good, and not everything painful bad
Hobbs traces the Protagoras debate over whether pleasantness is sufficient for goodness, noting Protagoras’ resistance to the simple hedonistic identification.
, Plato and the Hero: Courage, Manliness and the Impersonal Good, 2000supporting
Non est ergo malum nisi privatio boni. Ac per hoc nusquam est nisi in re aliqua bona… bona sine malis esse possunt, sicut ipse Deus… mala vero sine bonis esse non possunt.
Jung quotes Augustine’s Latin directly to document the privatio boni tradition — evil as nothing but the absence of good — whose psychological adequacy Jung himself will contest.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951supporting
we think of these things not as somehow good or bad in themselves but only as advantageous or qualifiedly good, disadvantageous or qualifiedly bad.
Graver distinguishes the Stoic category of the intrinsically good — which triggers uncompromising evaluation — from the qualified or circumstantial good that governs most ordinary practical reasoning.
, Stoicism and Emotion, 2007supporting
And the temperate are also good? Yes. And can that be good which does not make men good? Certainly not.
Socrates applies a functional test for the good — that nothing deserves the name ‘good’ unless it produces good in those who possess it — in the course of examining temperance.
, Charmides, -380supporting
the knowledge of one particular right is true knowledge only if it is founded upon knowledge of the good as such. And here Socrates admitted that he himself had failed to attain his goal.
Snell articulates the Socratic epistemological claim that all particular moral knowledge is grounded in and dependent upon knowledge of the good as such, an ideal Socrates confessed he never achieved.
, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953supporting
the moral commandments of the Old Testament… cannot be said to prescribe the good; rather, they forbid evil… even the most skilful jurist would find himself checkmated if he had to furnish an unambiguous statement of what is good and right.
Snell observes that positive definition of the good has historically eluded moral systems, which tend instead to proceed negatively by prohibiting evil.
, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953supporting
the good alone is the friend of that only which is neither good nor evil… the body which is in health requires neither medical nor any other aid, but is well enough
Plato’s Lysis argues that the good befriends only the morally neutral — neither good nor evil — using health as the paradigm of a state that needs good assistance only when deficient.
, Lysis, -390supporting
Since it is by one of these three things that our nature is first activated, whether to impulse or repulsion… every proper function of avoidance or pursuit must have its reference to one of these
The Stoic classification of primary impulse-objects provides the naturalistic foundation from which the concept of the good as perfected rational appropriateness is differentiated.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987aside
The good man is requited, and the wicked is punished (if not himself, then his children who perpetuate his self; and if not in this world, then in Hades)
Snell traces the archaic Greek conviction that justice is guaranteed cosmically, so that goodness ultimately receives its due reward — a moral worldview that frames early Greek ethics.
, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953aside
He Who witnesses to His own goodness would not repudiate the name of Good. Plainly, then, He was not angry because He was called good
John of Damascus defends Christ’s intrinsic goodness by arguing that his response to the rich young ruler was not a denial of goodness but a correction of its misapplication as a mere honorific.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016aside