‘Good’ and ‘the Good’

If someone says ‘I want some string’, they can be asked what they want it for. They might reply, ‘I want to tie up this present.’ The question ‘But why do you want to do that?’ wouldn’t usually be asked by anyone who knows the ways of the world; but it could for all that be informatively answered. That answer might in turn provoke the question, ‘And why do you want that?’ – and so on and so on. At a certain point we will get an answer to ‘Why?’ that presents an end as simply desirable in itself. This answer will supply what Elizabeth Anscombe called a desirability characterization. The question ‘Why do you want that?’, asked of such an end, will be futile, frivolous or uncomprehending.

Given that there are fairly objective criteria for what shall count as a desirability characterization, it seems clear that one example of such a characterization will be: ‘X is pleasant.’ ‘But why do you want what’s pleasant?’ certainly has the appearance of a silly question. The end presented as thus desirable might be that of drinking another glass of champagne, or of going for a walk on a summer’s day. These are examples of activities, but there are also passive pleasures, such as the pleasure of being driven in a fast car.

Now those philosophers who follow Aristotle and Aquinas would say that whatever is desired is desired under the aspect of the good (‘Quidquid appetitur, appetitur sub specie boni’). A person’s goal or end is what they would give as the final answer in a series of answers to the repeated question, ‘Why do you want that?’ It would thus seem natural for a Thomist to equate the goodness of an end with its desirability, in Anscombe’s sense: for a desirability characterization brings an end to such repeated asking of ‘Why?’ An example of a desirability characterization, as we have noted, is ‘X is pleasant’. So it appears that to desire something because it is or would be pleasant, and not as a means to anything further, is to desire that thing under the aspect of the good, and as good.