GOOD FRIDAY. See Holy Week.
GOOD, THE HIGHEST.
The term "Highest Good" (summum banum) is an expression used in philosophic discussion to denote the chief end of man's existence. Cicero defines it
(De fintbw, I., xii. 42) as " that which is referred to no other thing, .while all other
things are referred to it." The corre of sponding Greek word telm, "end," is Plato and often used simply, without any quali Aristotle. fying words, for the highest good, with which Aristotle identifies it (" Nico machean Ethics," 1094a, 18-22): " If anything is an end of our actions which we desire for itself, and other things on account of it . . . it is plain that this must be the Good and the Best." And that this is almost universally predicated of eudaimonia, "happiness," he states in another passage (1095a, 17 sqq.): "For we choose this for its own sake al ways, and never for the sake of anything else." He admits, however, that there is a controversy as to what constitutes it. The Christian Fathers, in estimating the opinions of the philosophers on this subject, give the preference to Plato, because in his system God is especially prominent as the "objective" Highest Good, in the modern phrase. Aristotle considers merely "the end of our actions," the " Good ", which can be realized by human effort, while Plato brings ethics into close relation with metaphyaicq. He hypoatatizes the "Good" of Socrates into the highest of his "ideas," identifying it with the moos, "mind," of Anaxagoras, the one thing, that has real existence, the Godhead. In Plato the same term, "the Good," designates what is highest alike in the life of man and in the system of the universe. The Fathers also commend the way in which he speaks of the ethical "good," the attainable " end," the " happiness " of man; the Highest Good in a subjective sense, as " a likeness to God to the extent of our powers, which likeness consists in becoming just and holy by means of wisdom." The conception of the Highest Good in Christian ethics was largely influenced by the Platonic view, according to which the soul becomes like God only by ascetic flight from the world of sense into the world of ideas, by philosophic meditation on death, by ideal speculation and contemplation of the Godhead. This is intellectualism, to whose prevalence in the Church Aristotle also contributed by defining as the highest good the "contemplative activity" of the soul which is like that of God.
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