2022 Cassirer Lecture with Sebastian Rödl - The Idea of the Good: Nature, Justice, Love (In-Person Only)

Professor Sebastian Rödl, Professor of Philosophy,  University of Leipzig

I want to consider the idea of the good. The idea I mean is the one that opens up practical thought, thought of what to do and how to act. Knowing what to do is knowing what is good to do; ultimately, it is knowing what to do so as to act well. My theme is the use of “good” in “good to do” and “acting well”. It is the formal object of practical knowledge: what practical knowledge as such knows.

The logical form in which ideas of good and bad first appear is thought of means to ends: a means is good for the end it serves, which end in turn is good. This logical form is easily seen to be subordinate to one that represents an end it itself: what is its own means and thus the source of its own reality. That is the idea of life, and the idea of the good is none other than the idea of life. The three terms of the title name three conceptions of human life. I shall ask whether and how they may determine the idea of the good.

Reception to follow in HQ 134 (Fellows Hall)