Summum Bonum

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Summum Bonum: the highest good… especially as the
ultimate goal according to which values and priorities
are established in a ethical system…

to denote the fundamental principle on which some system
of ethics is based- that is, the aim of actions, which, if
consistently pursued, will lead to the best possible life…

There have been many suggestions to what constitute
the Summum Bonum… the search for happiness,
the search for knowledge, the search for our modern trinkets,
of money, of fame, of material possessions, of power…
vita contemplativa, vita activa… which includes work…
at least according to Arendt…the seeking of god,
and inclusion into heaven…

each of these at one time or another has been brought up
as Summum Bonum… but the simply knowledge that
not one of these has been chosen as the ‘‘ONE’’ path
to Summum Bonum, suggests that we are not on the right path…
the lack of universal assent to any one of these suggests the
failure of them to satisfy our needs and wants…

One of the problems with making one particular statement
such as making happiness as the Summum Bonum, is that
at different times in our lives, both individually and collectively,
we seek different things… or to put it another way,
if we seek what the heart wants, the heart wants what it wants,
but that often changes, what my heart wants today is different than
it wanted 10 years ago… or 50 years ago…
our ever-changing environment changes what is the ‘‘good life’’
for us… what was the ‘‘good life’’ at age 25, is vastly different
than what is the ‘‘good life’’ today at 65…it is rather hard to
pin down what the ‘‘good life’’ is, if it is constantly changing…

But another brick in the wall in this matter is the pressure
of the society/state on what the ‘‘good life’’ looks like…
in our capitalistic world, the ‘‘good life’’ looks like
a well paying job with a house in the burbs, a spouse,
two car garage, white picket fence with two kids and
a dog named spot… this is what ‘‘happiness’’ is supposed
to look like in our capitalistic world…

But this belief is uprooted by our modern day discontent and the
malaise that surrounds us like a deep fog in the morning…
if the capitalistic vision of the ‘‘good life’’ is right, then why is
there so much discontentment in modern day America?
Why is drug use so prevalent? Why the need for addictions
if we are so content with our modern day ‘‘good life’’ as
presented by capitalism?

and what about other routes to the ‘‘good life’’… perhaps
we should seek out our happiness? but again, that leads us
too much failure… for what makes us happy? Frankly,
who knows… it changes by the day…and once we reach
what we thought was our chance at happiness and the ‘‘good life’’
we find that what we thought was our chance at happiness, is really
just a noose around our necks… what of the people who wake
up in the middle of the night and ask, is all there is?
my happiness, my ‘‘good life’’ is bound to living the American
dream?

and in the end, we discover, much to our dismay, we have
absolutely no idea what makes us happy or what the ‘‘good life’’ is…
and in the end, we are left with illusions and superstitions that
pretend to know what the ‘‘good life’’ is…

and I hold that part of the problem with us discovering what the ‘‘good life’’
is, is the myths and superstitions that hold us hostage in our lives…
the indoctrinations of our lives prevent us from gaining access to
knowing what the ‘‘good life’’ is… we are indoctrinated with all
kinds of values and beliefs that suggest, wrongly, that the ‘‘good life’’
is this, this and that… but in fact, I hold that it is, in part,
why we understand so little about our happiness and what
is the ‘‘good life’’… that our indoctrinations send us wrong
in terms of our understanding what is our happiness and
what is the ‘‘good life’’’

Is there a universal answer to the question, ''What is the good life?"

I would say no… on the grounds that there doesn’t seem to be
a universal, overall answer to any one question we face…
to say, god is the answer to the question of the ‘‘good life’’ is
not a universal answer because millions of people don’t hold
to that point of view… and universal requires, demands
universal assent… and what question or questions human
beings have, will get a universal assent? None that I can see…

questions like ''is life worth living?" even that question will not
get universal assent… entire philosophies are devoted to the
negative in that question… every single question asked,
will get answers from two sides, the con, negative and the pro/
the positive… and many such questions will get answers beyond
just negative or positive…

Summum Bonum… the good life… what is it and does
it have any type of universal assent as to what that might be,
as far as the answer to the question, what is the ''good life?"

Kropotkin

2

the ‘‘good life’’ was often thought to be with the one
who obeyed ‘‘Nature’’… much philosophy, both
east and west, has followed this line of thought…

One of the problems, among many, has been coming
to what exactly is ''Nature?“… How do we describe or
define what is ''Nature”… the ‘‘good life’’ is this and
‘‘Nature’’ is this…and the one follows the other…

But the problem, as it often is, how do we connect those
two ideas? How does one follow the other? What is the connecting
point of the two idea’s… Nature and the ‘‘good life’’…
and especially considering that our modern world has little
to no use for the term of ‘‘nature’’… ask a modern person,
what does ‘‘nature’’ mean to you and there will be no answer
because few if any, actually understand what ‘‘Nature’’ is…

My handy dandy dictionary says this about Nature…

Nature: the phenomena of the physical world collectively,
including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features
and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations,
‘‘The breathtaking beauty of Nature’’…

the second definition is just as interesting for me as the first…

  1. The basic or inherent features of something, especially when
    seen as characteristics of it…
    ‘‘Helping them to realize the nature of their problems’’

I hold that we cannot understand this second definition because
we cannot, and do not understand what is ‘‘human’’ nature…
What does it mean to be human? is to ask, what is
human nature? what is the basic or inherent feature of being
human? We can’t even answer that question… What is the
human condition… is just another phrasing of that question,
what is human nature?

How can we understand ‘‘Nature’’ out there, if we can’t understand
‘‘Nature’’ within us? … and so, I ask, what is the exact connection
between human beings and ''Nature?" and how does that
explanation help us understand what is the ''good life?"

Kropotkin

3

within both the religious and philosophical community, there is
this belief that says this: ‘‘You are, by Nature, evil’’
we see this in philosophical works such as Hobbes
and within religious text such as the Bible…

The question becomes this word, ‘‘Nature’’
by ‘Nature’’ does this mean that we are born with,
naturally have evil within us…or does it mean that
we become evil by the nature of the state… As
Rousseau and many afterwards have seen it…
we are born innocent and turned evil by the state/society…
Nature vs environment is still an argument today…
is evil inherited or is evil taught/learned?

Are children born bigoted and racists, or do children
learn it? In watching young children playing, it seems to be
clear that bigotry/racism is a learned response, not
a natural one…what matters most to the children is not
race or creed, or color or even sex… but the play itself…
play with me and I am your friend, don’t and I am not a friend…
of course, being children, they won’t remember the second part,
in 5 minutes… that is the nature of being a child… everything
is in the present… there is no past or future in young children…
which suggest that time itself is learned, not inherited…
tell a child that dinner will be ready in 10 minutes and within
30 seconds, the child will ask, is dinner ready yet?
they have no sense of time… and what about space?
Children also learn that… watch a child, a small child, even
a baby reach for a toy… they aren’t quite sure where it is…
they have no sense of space… and thus they often fail
to reach something because they can’t tell where it is…

so, space and time, are not inherited traits, but learned traits…
Don’t judge by your standards, watch young children…
we can see this by the actions of young children…
if they don’t get space and time, how are they going to get
concepts like nature, god, reality, metaphysics… without being
taught?

These are the indoctrinations of childhood I often speak of…
they are of the moment, right now… and if god is out of reach,
not seen, he doesn’t exist to a young child…how do children
learn about people being out of sight? we play the game, peek-a-boo…
and from that, children learn about the presence of others…
of being out of view… peek-a-boo is the starting point of
learning about god… someone who is out of sight…
technically it is called ‘‘Object permanence’’… the one who
created this term was Jean Piaget… and he thought that
the age for ‘‘object permanence’’ was 8 months of age…and
later research has suggested that babies begin to learn
‘‘object permanence’’ as young as 4 months of age…

Object permanence is considered to be a cognitive skill…
which is a mental process of thinking, reasoning, remembering,
imagining, learning, and using language…

which suggests that the understanding of god is not ‘‘a priori’’
but comes with experience… with increased cognition…

and that returns us to this question of evil… to be born with
sin, to be born within evil, doesn’t seem to be possible given
that all other aspects of cognition, of reasoning and imagination,
of language, of remembering are skill that are learned, not
inherited…or have you forgotten peek-a-boo?

So, what does this mean for our original question,
What is Summum Bonum? the good life?

it is a learned tasked… one that comes from experience…
it is learned…and how do we understand the concept of
Nature? it too is also learned…not inherited… or inborn…
and of sin? and evil? and right and wrong?

What do you think?

Kropotkin

4

The next question becomes this:

‘‘We hold these truths to be ‘‘self-evident’’ that all men are
created equal’’…

is the point of being self-evident inherent, or is it learning?
Are we born with the idea of that ''all men/human beings
are created equal?" or are did we learn that?

I would suggest that we learned the idea of human
beings being equal…for how would we be able to
judge who is superior and who is inferior?

What criteria would we use to judge one superior and one
inferior? That one could run faster, we might use that
as a judge to being superior, but being able to run faster
isn’t a great way to define people who are superior…
it could be one way, but there are certainly better ways to
make that judgement, right?

The problem lays with the fact that a facet of one being superior,
being able to run fast or being able to lift greater weights, doesn’t
suggest superiority in every facet or area… One can be able
to run fast and be as dumb as a rock or one being able to lift
vast weights and still be unable to outthink a dog…

this question of superiority or inferiority flounders on
what criteria one might use to judge said superiority
or inferiority…how are we to fairly judge such a matter?

and thus the only real conclusion can be that ‘‘all men are
created equal’’ is the only real way to think about that…
for any other way leads to complications and problems…

This is the bottom line basis of any political system… that
all men/human beings are equal…to judge some as
superior and some inferior, requires a criteria that we are
unable to provide…to judge him superior enough to be
king or dictator, means he must be vastly, in a measurable way,
superior to others… and I am not sure that one person is
so vastly superior to all others, that we can, in good conscience
make them king or dictator…all other political systems requires
us to make some sort of judgement call as to the superiority or
inferiority of people… even economic systems make
some judgement as to the superiority or inferiority of
people… those judged to be superior, make lots of money,
those judged inferior, make much less…but skills such
as being a mechanic or a surgeon, are not an absolute
skill set… it is more of a manner of degree’s…one may be able
to find problem better than another or one may be able to repair
a car engine better than another or one maybe better at
stitching people up… it is a relatively different skill set,
not an absolute skill set that set doctors or mechanics apart…

for my spinal surgery, I had a surgeon who by all accounts,
was a great surgeon, but he had about the worst bedside
manner of any doctor I ever had… and I accepted that…
given the degree of difficulty in my surgery, I was really ok,
with a doctor with no bedside manner but a great surgeon…
in other cases, I have gone differently and gone with the doctor
with a better bedside manner… it depends on the situation
and my needs at the time…

Given the different skill set of different doctors,
we can’t actually state, as a fact, that this doctor is
vastly superior to another doctor… we can only
identify the skill set we want out of a doctor and go with
that…there is no way to judge one superior to another
given the lack of a set skill set, a doctor or surgeon or
a mechanic needs…

How do we understand superiority or inferiority?
We can only guess, thus the value of beginning with
‘‘All men/doctors/surgeons are created equal’’
and find the one, the skill set, that works for us personally…

Kropotkin

5

and what does this have to do with the ''good life?"

that we adapt the ‘‘good life’’ based on what we need or desire
at the time… there is no set idea of the ‘‘good life’’… for
what criteria would we use that is universal, to apply the
idea of the ‘‘good life’’ to everyone? I can’t see a universal
application of the ‘‘good life’’ that applies to everyone…
so, how are we to work out what is the ‘‘good life’’ given
it is not universal, but individual?

Kropotkin

6

summum bonum: when Kropotkin finally stops chopping up all his paragraphs

7

We moderns, we see science as being stuff outside
of us, science is what happens to other people and events,
animals and stars… not to me… and the same is true
in regard to other disciplines … biology isn’t happening to me
nor is evolution, nor is politics or philosophy… in regard to
the methods of understanding, they don’t seem to apply to us…

I speak of ethics and morality and the reader assumes, assumes
that I am talking about someone else… not them… I write
about the bad faith of people and it is never about the reader, it
is always about someone else… bad faith? I don’t know
anything about that…it is someone else that has bad faith…
not me…I write about the evil in the world and the reader
says, not me… I am different…I am good… and how do I know?
I just know… I can’t be evil… I would know if I was evil…
nah, it is everyone else, not me…

How can we be so foolish to always think it’s someone
else that is evil or wrong or living in bad faith…
but not me…I may not be going to heaven, but I am
clearly not going to hell either… I stand outside of that…

the serial murderer who thinks of themselves as being
the ‘‘good guy’’ and how is that possible? If there is one talent
that all human being have, it is the ability to justify all beliefs
and actions as being reasonable and/or right… as justified…
I may have killed 12 people but I was justified because…
they deserved it, or perhaps they weren’t nice to me, or
perhaps they were, in some unknown fashion, evil…
it is the very human ability to avoid accountability and responsibility
for our actions and beliefs…I didn’t kill 12 people, they
deserved to die… meaning I was not accountable for their
deaths…

one hears about the mother or father who slaughters their family
in the middle of the night and when asked why, they say, god
told them to save them from sin or save them from evil…
I just did what I was told by god… and what if, what if they
are right!.. What if god did tell them to slaughter their family?
this is known in religious circles as being a ‘‘revelation’’…
the prophets are known to hear the word of god and it being
a ‘‘revelation’’, it is to be followed… so, how do we know
if one type of ‘‘revelation’’ is good and another bad?

the word of god, the revelations of the bible, of the prophets,
are good and just, so why can’t we believe the man who says
that god told him to save his family from evil by killing them?

In the end, it comes down to our own understanding of
god and revelations… we decide based on our own conscience
and mind set… and it is easy to judge others… our own
conscience isn’t at stake… I am not being held accountable or
responsible for my actions, so a decision is rather easy for me…
but what if I was being held accountable? this is the basis of
jury duty… where I am just one of several deciding another’s fate…
where all the responsibility and accountability doesn’t fall onto me…
another example of diluting actions and decisions to make
them bearable for us… and isn’t this exactly what we do
when we decide that ethics and morality is about someone else,
not me… or we decide that others are evil, not me…
doing what it takes to avoid personal responsibility for who
we are and what we do… it’s a game all human beings do,
just sometimes we get official sanction for our avoidance of
responsibility… the death penalty of the firing squad, where
one person is given a blank bullet to allow someone to
decide they weren’t the one who shot someone… to give
an out for the members of the firing squad… it wasn’t my bullet
that killed him…one again, avoiding accountability, responsibility
for actions taken…(I have been told it is quite easy to tell
if one’s gun has the real bullet or the blank when fired… there is
no mystery to the one who fired that gun… is that better or worse?
BTW, would you agree to be a member of a firing squad? To
do your duty? )

Questions of conscience… and who decides? and why do we
allow them to decide?

Kropotkin

8

Who has the authority to say what is best and what is worst?

That’s not as easy as it looks.

Why is a beef sandwich superior to a chicken sandwich?

You see the obvious issue here.
But we can see beyond the difference,
to state that each of them is to some degree “Good”.

Kropotkin wants people to let go of the modern, and the old.

“Do this, do that” - Krop, where are you getting your authority from?

9

Dan:
Who has the authority to say what is best and what is worst?

That’s not as easy as it looks.

Why is a beef sandwich superior to a chicken sandwich?

You see the obvious issue here.
But we can see beyond the difference,
to state that each of them is to some degree “Good”.

Kropotkin wants people to let go of the modern, and the old.

“Do this, do that” - Krop, where are you getting your authority from?

K: given your answer, you didn’t actually read all my posts…
but in any case, your failure to read, perhaps you did read it,
and even worse, failed to understand it, I suggest you go back
and read what I wrote and try again…

Kropotkin

10

I don’t think this way, that the knowledge in science has nothing to do with me. I’m skeptical that other people here think that way, but I can’t know. Where did you get this idea?

Well, I’m not MAGA nor conservative or right wing, so when you talk about them, I don’t think you’re talking about me. But then it seems pretty clear you see them as a group that you are not in and you don’t do what they do.

But when people talk about ethics or write about, of course I think that ethics and morality relate to me and my life. Are people here so different? Do mean people at ILP or people in general are like how you describe them here?

So, let me see if I understand this: when you write about MAGA and the right wing you aren’t doing what you consider is foolish here? Could you explain that.

11

Perhaps the reality is he thinks that way, and he just assumed everyone else did too without asking.

12

Perhaps. I think it’s a miraculously odd assumption.

13

so, if I were to say, people are selfish or perhaps say, people
are vain… you wouldn’t automatically exempt yourself as being
one of those people? well people are vain or selfish, but not me,
would be the response of most people…

so, do you exempt yourself when hearing how people are stupid?
and try not to lie…

Kropotkin

14

No, I wouldn’t. I don’t think that I am selfish and vain period is a good descritpion of me. But have I been vain and selfish? Oh, yeah. Will it happen this week? Oh yeah.

How about you?

Would you simply describe yourself as vain and selfish? Are there degrees of this? If not, I’m not sure how it’s a useful thing to bring up.

It’s not a binary issue and I don’t think most people would frame it so simply.

I do think people have a bias when it comes to self-evaulation, but even that cuts both ways. There are many people who are overly self-critical. Who manage to interpret themselves as vain and selfish when they were just taking care of themselves. Or they manage not to notice the good things they do. That’s very common amongst people who have suffered at the hands of inappropriate parents, but even in those with happy childhoods and good parenting.

Have you ever seen yourself in worse light than others? And for years? I certainly have?

I’ve been stupid about many things and not a week goes by when I don’t mutter something at myself for being an idiot or stupid. And then there are simply areas where I am not smart at all.

How about you? Be honest, as you would say. When you are on a diatribe against the right/maga/conservatives/religious people do you see yourself as having the traits you see in them?

And then where’d you get this idea that people don’t think that the knowledge in science applies to them? Is there really a majority that think that physiology and anatomy and biochemistry, as a few examples, have nothign to do with them? That gravity has nothing to do with what they experience?

15

Will someone please explain what this has to do with anything said before it? Peter? Or perhaps you know @greenfuse

16

I was questioning the assumption in the OP.

He seems to have added a category, just for me to answer. Or perhaps it was somewhere in one of his long posts and I missed it. It’s a bit of a have you stopped beating your wife kind of question. If you say no, then you are never self-critical and always see others as having all the problems, a bit like how he views conservatives and himself. If you say, yes, well, then you’ve categorized yourself or could be interpreted as doing that, in a negative way. If you say something like I did, where you say that sometimes you are stupid, then it can be judged as making some qualified, not courageous, hedging answer. Perhaps PK will answer the question himself, so he at least shares the problem of answering such a question. He also opted to not respond to most of my post.

Certainly his sense that people do not think science applies to them is a very strange assertion. Hopefully he’ll let us know where that idea came from.

17

A good life is a life of selfless service to others. The ego is an insatiable master. Happy are those who escape from it’s tyranny.