Goods and Evils

Abstract

In The Rigbt and Good Ross drew a distinction between the adjunctive or attributive use of word ['good'], as when we speak of a good runner or a good poem, and predicative use of it, as when it is said that knowledge is good or that pleasure is good.' He adds that ordinary usage first meaning that of 'good of its kind'is much commoner; it appears to be earlier. This distinction corresponds to a marked difference in directions that philosophers of last century have taken in their study of good and evil. Thus, in last few decades we have found linguistic philosophers examining various syntactic details and logical features of adjunctive use, as when Vendler points out that whereas 'S is a good cook' derives from 'S's cooking is good', 'X is a good meal' derives from 'X is good to eat.'3 In contrast, in keeping with Ross' claim that, when predicatively used, 'good' [often] means 'intrinsically good',' some philosophers argued over possibility, knowledge, and nature of intrinsic goodness existentialists denying it in their insistence that values are created in subject's act of choice, phenomenologists on continent discussing its relation to various affective experiences in which values were allegedly presented, non-naturalists in Britain