-- "Each deed is the worse or the better, but no one of men himself in all respects is wise." (Chase and Phillips' A New Introduction to Greek)
-- “The experiences that do not provoke thought are those that do not at the same time issue in a contradictory perception. Those that do have that effect I set down as provocatives, when the perception no more manifests one thing than its contrary, alike whether its impact comes from nearby or afar." (Republic, 523a ff)
Say I am learning how to shoot a basketball accurately and get a swish every time. I practice every day, and each day increases my precision. Today my shot is better than yesterday, but it is also worse than my shot tomorrow.
My shot today is both better and worse. Tomorrow it will be better and worse.
What is the better?
It seems to me that the better is a movement towards the good and away from the bad. We could investigate more into what is this movement.
A tutor who notices that his student solves a particular type of problem with more ease than before praises him: "Good!" This strikes me as peculiar. It seems at first that we say the better is the good, but this doesn't seem right.
The good, as I understand it in a "strict" sense, is the best, or the perfect. Ho agathos anthropos, the good man. We can say that Jesus Christ is the good man, and we all fall short of His measure of humanity.
To become better in something is good, for how could it be bad? Perhaps someone will say that to become better in lying is not good, but bad. I will attempt a first look at this soon enough -- for now it seems good to say that to become better in lying is to become a worse person.
The better is not the good, but to become better is good. This seems to make sense because where else can imperfection go? For now it seems we have come to the proverb, "the perfect is the enemy of the good."
-- “The experiences that do not provoke thought are those that do not at the same time issue in a contradictory perception. Those that do have that effect I set down as provocatives, when the perception no more manifests one thing than its contrary, alike whether its impact comes from nearby or afar." (Republic, 523a ff)
Say I am learning how to shoot a basketball accurately and get a swish every time. I practice every day, and each day increases my precision. Today my shot is better than yesterday, but it is also worse than my shot tomorrow.
My shot today is both better and worse. Tomorrow it will be better and worse.
What is the better?
It seems to me that the better is a movement towards the good and away from the bad. We could investigate more into what is this movement.
A tutor who notices that his student solves a particular type of problem with more ease than before praises him: "Good!" This strikes me as peculiar. It seems at first that we say the better is the good, but this doesn't seem right.
The good, as I understand it in a "strict" sense, is the best, or the perfect. Ho agathos anthropos, the good man. We can say that Jesus Christ is the good man, and we all fall short of His measure of humanity.
To become better in something is good, for how could it be bad? Perhaps someone will say that to become better in lying is not good, but bad. I will attempt a first look at this soon enough -- for now it seems good to say that to become better in lying is to become a worse person.
The better is not the good, but to become better is good. This seems to make sense because where else can imperfection go? For now it seems we have come to the proverb, "the perfect is the enemy of the good."
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