Searching for the Holy Grail: An Inquiry into the Existence and Content of the Highest Good

Abstract

This dissertation is on the summum bonum or the traditional notion of the highest good of human beings. Once considered the most important ethical idea in ancient and medieval philosophy, this notion is now decidedly marginal and borders on obscurity in contemporary philosophy. The two core goals of the dissertation are to establish the existence of the highest good/purpose of human beings, and to determine the content of this highest good. In the first part I argue for the existence of the descriptive component of the highest good (that there is an ultimate end of one’s actions and desires) by expanding on the kind of abstract reasoning Aristotle uses in his defence of the idea in the Nicomachean Ethics, and by defending the guise of the good thesis. I also argue for the truth of the normative component of the highest good (that the ultimate end should be the ultimate end of one’s actions) by drawing on the contemporary literature on constitutivism. One of my arguments for the goodness of the ultimate end claims to justify the existence of objective morality/normativity from scratch. In the second part I connect the highest good to the contemporary study of well-being and argue that well-being or eudaimonia is the highest good of humans. I then assess several different theories of the content of the highest good or well-being (pleasure, objective list, desire fulfilment, knowledge/contemplation), focusing on both contemporary theories of well-being and ancient theories of the highest good. Ultimately, I argue for an original theory which says that the content of the highest good/well-being is loving participation.