Good and evil

Use in the book

Three widely separated passages create the main arc. The Thracian physician's account attributes the body's and the whole person's bad and good conditions to the soul (156e). Critias later defines temperance as doing good things (163e). Finally he identifies knowledge of good and bad as the knowledge that makes us happy (174b). These are related concerns, but they have different speakers, grammatical constructions and argumentative tasks. The medical story is Socrates' reported account; the action definition is Critias' proposal; the final knowledge is introduced within a highly concessive thought experiment.

The first explicit ethical test of goodness occurs in the refutation of modesty. Socrates elicits that temperate men are good and that temperance makes its possessors good (160e–161a2). Goodness is thus more than looking socially admirable. The Homeric example supplies a situation in which modesty is not good for someone, whereas temperance is treated as reliably good. The test does not give a general definition of goodness. Indeed the step from making people good to being good is compressed enough that Burnet records proposed repairs at 160e11. A lexicon should register the premise actually used rather than manufacture a completed ethical theory behind it.

At 163c–e2 Critias connects good with the fine and beneficial. His explanation reassigns “one's own” and “appropriate” to what benefits, and makes good production count as proper doing. Socrates allows terminology to be stipulated if its application is clear. He does not endorse the definition merely because he reformulates it. The doctor then reveals the distinction between a good result and the agent's awareness that it is good (164a–c2). This small example anticipates the later distinction between possessing technical competence and knowing whether the resulting condition is beneficial.

Socrates' own ethical commitment remains explicit but provisional in form: he “divines” that temperance is beneficial and good (169b). When a knowledge-guided household or city is imagined, goodness first seems to follow from the removal of technical mistakes. Socrates then withdraws that easy agreement (171d–172e23). The withdrawal is essential: a reader who stops with the orderly city misses the dialogue's examination of the standard by which its successes count as good.

At 174a–b2 even imagined comprehensive knowledge of past, present and future must be analysed by kind. Critias does not say that all knowledge contributes equally to happiness. Knowledge of health is more relevant than calculation, but the decisive answer is knowledge of good and bad. Socrates sharpens this to the claim that this knowledge, rather than all other sciences together, makes doing well and happiness possible (174b–c). The next test removes it while retaining the crafts. Doctors can still make people healthy, cobblers supply shoes, pilots and generals save lives; what disappears is those achievements' occurring well and beneficially (174c–d). Technical success therefore does not, within the test, supply its own sufficient criterion of value.

This is not a denial that health, survival or competent work can be good. It distinguishes the craft's immediate accomplishment from the knowledge that would establish its contribution to a good life. The passage does not spell out a procedure for using that knowledge, identify its possessor, or settle whether it is one virtue or all virtue. Critias tries to give temperance a share in its benefit through supervision; Socrates insists that the two knowledges have different objects and work (174d–175a2). That restriction is part of the disputed argument, not a settled account of all relationships between expertise and its governance.

Knowledge of good and bad is consequently a strong interpretive lead, not the dialogue's announced final definition. The last explicit judgment remains that temperance is a great good despite the inquiry's failure (175e). What is left open is how the virtue, knowledge of value, self-knowledge and effective guidance of life fit together.

Places to read

1. 154eCritias’ “beautiful and good” applies a social and ethical commendation to Charmides
2. 156b–e2Good doctors and the good and bad proceeding from the soul illustrate different evaluative uses
3. 160e–161b2Temperance makes people good; modesty is not good in every case
4. 163c–164c23Doing good is defined and tested against beneficial action without awareness
5. 166dMaking things clear as they are is called a common good
6. 169bSocrates affirms his expectation that temperance is beneficial and good
7. 171d–172e23The goodness of technically correct life is first assumed, then questioned
8. 174a–175a23Knowledge of good and bad is distinguished from technical sciences and knowledge of knowledge
9. 175e–176aTemperance remains a great good despite the negative outcome

Translation in this edition

“Good and bad,” rather than “good and evil,” preserves the Greek pairing across the medical prologue, action definition and final epistemic argument. It avoids prematurely making all instances narrowly moral. Yet this translation choice does not exclude ethical goodness: the character of good men and the worth of an entire life are plainly at stake. In 174e τἀγαθόν is the crasis of τὸ ἀγαθόν; it is not a different technical concept.

ἀγαθός

Attested: ἀγαθὸν / ἀγαθόν / ἀγαθὰ / ἀγαθοῦ (agathon / agathon / agatha / agathou). Good; may qualify people, actions or outcomes, while knowledge of good and bad emerges as the claimed condition of benefit. References: 160e, 161a, 167e, 169b, 172a, 173a, 175e, 174b, 174c, 156e, 163d, 163e, 174d. Lexical identification: lemma: ἀγαθός. See Good and bad.

ἐξαιρέω

Attested: ἐξελεῖν (exelein). Take out or remove; the thought experiment subtracts knowledge of good and bad from the other expertises. References: 174c. Lexical identification: lemma: ἐξαιρέω. See Good and bad.

κακός

Attested: κακὰ / κακοὺς / κακόν / κακοῦ (kaka / kakous / kakon / kakou). Bad or harmful, contrasted with good; ranges from bodily and human ills in the soul-treatment story to bad action and the bad as the object of the knowledge needed for beneficial living. References: 156e, 161a, 163e, 174b, 174c, 174d. Lexical identification: lemma: κακός. See Good and bad.

εἴπερ (eiper)

If indeed or if it is the case that; makes the goodness inference depend on the agreed claim that temperance makes people good. References: 161a. Lemma: εἴπερ. See Good and bad.

τὸ εὖ γε (to eu ge)

Doing something well in the beneficial sense is singled out; competent production alone survives the subtraction of knowledge of good and bad. References: 174c. Lemma: εὖ. See Good and bad.

Use in the book

The dialogue repeatedly makes apparently clear evaluative language require an answer to “good in what respect?” In the opening inquiry a good adviser is someone who knows the subject on which he advises (106d). Neither wealth nor physical attractiveness supplies that knowledge. The same restriction returns more sharply when Alcibiades wants the virtue of good men at 124e. Socrates asks what they are good at. Alcibiades' answer, managing affairs, only relocates the question: riding and seafaring are affairs too. Naming respectable Athenians does not determine an expertise.

The shoemaker example at 125a–b prevents an easy transition from local competence to unqualified personal goodness. The shoemaker is intelligent about producing shoes and good at that work; he is unintelligent about producing cloaks and bad at that. Thus the same person is good and bad by that argument. Alcibiades refuses to describe the good men he seeks as bad as well, and eventually identifies their capacity as ruling citizens who share in political life. This shows why domain-qualified goodness is insufficient to state his aspiration. It does not mean that the craftsman is wicked for failing to know every craft.

The earlier rescue argument also turns on respecting evaluative scope. At 115b–e2 courageous rescue is good in respect of courage and bad in respect of wounds and death. Alcibiades' ranking establishes courage as a great good: he says he would not be willing to live as a coward. Socrates obtains the parallel ranking of life and courage among the best, death and cowardice among the worst. The result is not the familiar doctrine that only vice is bad and death indifferent. That doctrine would contradict the admissions used here. The argument instead separates good and bad features of one undertaking so that its fineness need not be the respect in which it is bad.

The inference at 116b–d2 places goodness between fineness and advantage. Fine action is linked to doing well and happiness; happiness involves acquiring good things; good things are conceded advantageous. Justice reaches advantage through these intermediaries. The route is dialectical, built from Alcibiades' answers, and followed by his confession of not knowing what he says. The articles on Fine conduct and Doing well mark the argumentative qualifications that a bare equation of good, fine, and advantageous would conceal.

The later discussion makes the agent's identity and orientation relevant to recognizing goods. At 133c–d2 Socrates asks how someone ignorant of himself could know his own bad and good things. At 134a–b bad action and bad fortune are connected to ignorance, and bad people are called wretched; riches alone cannot remove that condition. At 134c–e2 justice and temperance guide knowledge of one's goods and the prospect of doing well. These passages relocate the assessment of goods from visible resources to the condition of the agent who governs their use.

Yet the text does not eliminate its earlier ordinary uses of good. Good land, competent teaching, a better guardian, and piloting excellence remain intelligible. What is challenged is the inference that an admired possession, birth, office, or isolated skill makes its possessor good in the sense required to govern a city. The lexicon must therefore preserve both continuities and restrictions: the dialogue connects personal goodness with knowledge and virtue, but earns that connection by asking which competence and whose good are at stake.

Places to read

1. 106d–107c23Good advice is subject-specific and independent of wealth or appearance
2. 110bThe boy Alcibiades confidently calls another child wicked and unjust
3. 115a–116d2345Good and bad are distinguished by aspect before goodness is used in the justice-to-advantage inference
4. 124e–125b2A shoemaker can be good at shoes and bad at cloaks, exposing the ambiguity of “good men”
5. 133c–134b23Recognizing one’s goods requires self-knowledge; bad people are described as wretched
6. 134c–134e2Just and temperate action leads to knowledge of one’s goods and doing well

Translation in this edition

“Good” and “bad” are the edition's stable renderings of ἀγαθός and κακός; it avoids translating the latter as “evil.” Πονηρός receives “wicked” in a boy's accusation and “worthless” in a craft comparison. The title's two terms cover an evaluative family, not a doctrine that all uses denote precisely the same kind of property.

ἀγαθός

Attested: ἀγαθὸς (agathos; 106d); ἀγαθὰ (agatha; 115c); Ἀγαθός (agathos; 125a). At 106d: Good as an adviser in matters one knows. At 115c: Good things Alcibiades says he wishes to have. At 125a: Good at shoe production: explicitly domain-qualified competence. Lexical identification: lemma: ἀγαθός. See Good and bad.

κακός

Attested: κακόν (kakon; 115c); Κακὸς (kakos; 125b). At 115c: Bad as a proposed evaluation of courage, before Alcibiades ranks it among goods. At 125b: Bad at making cloaks, said of the otherwise competent shoemaker. Lexical identification: lemma: κακός. See Good and bad.

πονηρός

Attested: πονηρός (ponēros; 110b, 125a). At 110b: Wicked, the child Alcibiades’ accusation against another boy in play. At 125a: Worthless or incompetent in a subject one does not understand. Lexical identification: lemma: πονηρός. See Good and bad.

Use in the book

The opening danger is precisely the gap between things being bad and being thought good. Alcibiades’ delighted acceptance of the imagined tyranny at 141a–b makes that gap personal. The offer seems among the greatest good things, but he withdraws his acceptance if its possession entails loss of life or harmful use. Desire and the name of a coveted possession therefore cannot independently establish its goodness.

Ignorance brings the problem into sharper focus. At 143c some ignorance can be good for particular people in particular states, although ignorance of the best is bad at 143e. “Good” here evaluates an absence by what it prevents. Likewise genuine technical knowledge can be bad for its possessor when it facilitates destructive conduct. The dialogue does not have to deny that such knowledge is real in order to question its value.

The opening distinction is repeated near the close at 148b and 150c. By 150e Alcibiades’ educational need is to become able to know both bad and good. The language echoes the poetic formulation of knowing god and man, but the discrimination has not yet been taught. The safe prayer asks for good things without claiming that the suppliant can already name every thing that will meet that description.

Places to read

1. 138bBad requests can be mistaken for good ones.
2. 141a–dThe apparent goodness of tyranny is tested against use, harm and life.
3. 143c–144c2Ignorance has different values according to its object and agent.
4. 147dSocrates’ interpretation makes knowing many works bad for Margites.
5. 148b; 150c; 150eThe original error is recalled and the promised education concerns bad and good.

Translation in this edition

The edition renders kakos as “bad”, never “evil”. It preserves “worthy” and “worthless” for chrēstos and mochthēros of children at 142b, rather than collapsing them into the central good/bad vocabulary. Esthla in the prayer and esthlon at 150e are both rendered “good”.

Use in the book

The first explicit proof that gain is good begins from suffering loss. No one is said to benefit from it; men are harmed by loss; loss is bad; gain is its opposite; therefore gain is good. The favourable evaluation is doing essential work when Socrates next generalises desire. If all people love good things, lovers of gain cannot be isolated as a special class merely by their object. This depends both on the inference from opposition and on what “good” means for the people doing the loving.

The companion’s third definition reintroduces moral selection. Decent people refuse certain sources, and good people do not want gains that will harm them. At 227e Socrates asks whether something decent and good can be base. The question is readily answered no, but it joins beneficial goodness to moral decency at the very point where the companion wants to distinguish an acquisition from its consequences. A cash profit can be a gain under one description and bad under another; a definition restricting gain to net good excludes that usage rather than refuting every possible instance.

The retraction at 230a expressly permits good and bad gain, and the food and drink analogy explains how differently evaluated objects can retain one common designation. Good food and bad food are both food; good and bad people are equally human. That classificatory point temporarily protects the companion’s distinction. The ensuing definition of gain nevertheless reintroduces value, because disease is an acquisition without being a gain and health is a gain.

At 231e–232a what is worth possessing is beneficial and the beneficial is good. This route differs from the earlier bare appeal to opposites. Yet its result still depends on treating “worth possessing” as beneficial rather than merely exchangeable or saleable. The final goodness of all gains can therefore be understood as a conclusion about genuine advantage, without making every ordinarily profitable action morally good. The dialogue ends before that interpretive issue is resolved between the speakers.

Places to read

1. 227aἈγαθὸν ἄρα τὸ κέρδος. — Goodness follows the first opposition argument.
2. 227dεἴπερ ἀγαθά γέ ἐστιν — Good men’s wish for all gains is conditional on their goodness.
3. 230aκέρδος τι ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἕτερον κέρδος τι κακόν — Socrates provisionally permits good and bad gains.
4. 232aτὸ ὠφέλιμον ἀγαθόν ἐστιν — The final chain identifies the beneficial as good.

Translation in this edition

“Bad”, rather than “evil”, is the edition’s regular kakos. That matters for bad food, harmful disease and a disadvantageous exchange, where metaphysical or heavily moralised “evil” would overstate the sense. The same wide English “good” is retained for agathos, leaving the reader responsible for identifying the relevant standard at each step. Note 7 specifically warns readers to keep the moral pair distinct.

Use in the book

At 133d Socrates asks whether philosophy is merely fine or also good. The lover emphatically adds good. The distinction is important: social admiration and genuine benefit need not be assumed identical. In the exercise analogy, good condition of the body gives the claim a practical direction; at 136b the good are explicitly linked to usefulness.

The damaging conclusion comes from joining that moral classification to the supposed uselessness of the runner-up philosopher. By the lover’s account, philosophers would be base and useless while crafts exist. Socrates marks the conclusion as conditional on the account under examination and promptly doubts it. The dialogue is therefore not announcing that philosophers as a class are base. It uses the unacceptable result to reopen what philosophizing is.

A careful reader should also distinguish the premises actually accepted from a fully established equivalence. The interlocutor grants that the good are useful and the base useless. The later movement from uselessness to baseness treats these classes as if they exhaust the relevant possibilities, but no independent discussion establishes that exhaustive division. This is part of the compressed argumentative form.

In the final sequence the good/base distinction becomes a problem of discrimination and self-knowledge. A horse ignorant of good and base horses would not know what sort of horse it is; the human analogue follows. At 138a the question about oneself is explicitly whether one is decent or base. Self-knowledge is thus evaluative, not merely recognition of one’s name or biography. The late argument attempts to find a knowledgeable basis for the evaluations that the early dispute had delivered confidently.

Places to read

1. 133dκαλὸν εἶναι μόνον τὴν φιλοσοφίαν ἢ καὶ ἀγαθόν — Fine and good are initially distinguished in a question.
2. 136bοἱ ἀγαθοὶ χρήσιμοι, οἱ πονηροὶ ἄχρηστοι — The useful/useless contrast is aligned with good/base.
3. 138aπότερον χρηστός ἐστιν ἢ πονηρός — The distinction becomes the content of evaluative self-knowledge.

Translation in this edition

The translation keeps ponēros as “base” and mochthēros as “worthless” rather than flattening both into “bad.” Edition note 24 explicitly warns that the same bad-quality terms occur of horses and humans. Their differentiation in English aids tracking even where the Greek argument treats them as functionally comparable.

Use in the book

The range is wider than moral wickedness. Illness is κακόν at 217a–b, ignorance is a bad thing at 218a, and desires can be bad in their harmful operation without every desire being bad (221a–b). Translating every occurrence as “evil” can obscure the examples.

In the likeness argument, bad people are unstable and incapable of true friendship under the proposal being considered (214c–d). In the intermediate account, the presence of something bad must be distinguished from its having made the subject bad: a body can suffer illness without being classified as bad in the relevant sense; a person can have ignorance yet still recognize the lack of knowledge.

At 220b–221d23 the bad’s explanatory role is tested. If all attachment depended on it, eliminating it would eliminate attachment; desires that remain neither good nor bad furnish a counterexample. The later return to bad persons friendly to bad persons at 222c–d exposes the difficulty of identifying affinity simply with belonging to the same class.

Places to read

1. 217bΝόσος μὲν δὴ κακόν — illness, then, is bad.
2. 214c–d
3. 217a–218b23
4. 220b–221d23
5. 222c–d

Use in the book

The definition of virtue places doing good against doing evil despite the push of passion. The pairing of patience and mal instead concerns affliction, the condition that occasions endurance. The matter/freedom formula distinguishes all evil originating in matter from bad actions originating in freedom. Its two clauses should remain distinct, not be rewritten into a claim that matter excuses wrongdoing. These examples show why one English equivalent for every mal would obscure the argument.

Places to read

1. I, p. 213, entry 9, ¶1Good and evil are objects of accountable conduct.
2. II, p. 482, entry 2, ¶1Mal is affliction in its pairing with patience.
3. II, p. 892, entry 2, ¶1Evil and bad actions are given different stated origins.

Translation in this edition

The English translation uses affliction in the patience pairing and evil in the moral and metaphysical statements. It preserves both universal terms in the latter. The lexicon reports that assertion without supplying an unexpressed solution to the problem of evil.

Use in the book

At A39 Aristotle explains the introduction of two opposed powers through the presence of disorder and ugliness alongside order and beauty. He then says that, if one follows Empedocles’ meaning rather than his “stammering” expression, Love will emerge as the cause of good things and Strife as the cause of bad things. Only through a further conditional step does he suggest that Empedocles made good and evil themselves principles.

The argument’s structure matters. This is not a preserved confession of moral dualism by Empedocles. It is Aristotle’s reconstruction of what a predecessor was reaching toward in causal explanation. The claim is also not a simple summary of all physical functions: A52 makes Love destroy the differentiated cosmos, while Strife makes a world of the present kind. Different levels of description may support different valuations, and the dossier does not settle them with one slogan.

The lexicon retains the moral vocabulary because it shaped later interpretation, while identifying the person who supplies the mapping and the qualifications under which he supplies it.

Places to read

1. A 39 (polemical)Aristotle, Metaphysics A 4, 984b32. Reconstructs Love as cause of goods and Strife as cause of evils, then conditionally identifies good and evil as principles.
2. A 52 (testimony)Simplicius, De caelo 293,18. Shows why moral labels cannot simply substitute for the physical roles of destroying and producing a cosmos.

Translation in this edition

The closing clause about the evil cause is bracketed and absent from one branch of the tradition, though Alexander had it. The interpretative qualifications remain important whichever textual choice is made.