Hellenic Colloquia

The CENTER FOR HELLENIC TRADITIONS at CEU
cordially invites you
to the next lecture of the
3rd series of the
HELLENIC COLLOQUIA

by

Brad Inwood
Tria Genera Bonorum

25 March 2008

Time: Tuesday, March 25, 16:30
Location: CEU, Philosophy Department, Zrinyi 14, Room 412

“Go on, then, if you want, make your classifications and lay out your fancy distinctions of goods into three or four or many kinds! These categorizations have no bearing on the issue and this isn’t the way to bring us over to Plato.” This complaint from the Platonist Atticus reflects a long history of debate about the good. Is there just one kind of good (one thinks of Plato’s Form of the good) or are the complex classifications we find in later ancient texts closer to the truth? In this paper I try to reconstruct the history of the doctrine that there are goods of the body, goods of the soul, and external goods, along the way pointing to the moral of the story: that technical classifications can sharpen ethical discussion (such as the debate about the nature of the happy life) but can just as easily undermine it if taken too far. Platonists, Peripatetics and Stoics were all involved, but the positions taken do not align with school affiliations; the philosophical inclinations of individuals seem to play a greater role.