Medieval Good

All right here is the second and final post on the topic of “the Good”

Medieval philosophy, European Medieval philosophy anyway, had two prevailing views on “the Good”. Both views were based on the belief that a deity exists.

The first view, and rather uncommon, is that of Manichaeian Dualism. This view says that there are two fundamental forces in the world. Good and evil, these forces are always in conflict with each other, in what may be an eternal struggle. (the maybe in this case is because the Manichaeians postulated that the evil power is semi-eternal, meaning that the good could overcome it. However the evil force is still powerful enough to hold its own, it’s quite confusing) This view of good does not attribute good to being all-powerful in order to side step the problem of evil issue the second view faces.

The second view, is accredited to St. Augustine of Hippo. In his reply against the Manichaeians, he puts forward the idea that God (the Judeo-Christian God) is “the Good”. He is perfect and to be perfect he has to be good. This implies that perfection and good are one in the same. Augustine continues with this process of thought and goes on to address the problem of evil. The problem of evil is a obstacle that must be overcome for this view to hold any water (to have plausible validity). He says that other that God, and possibly the angels, all things are imperfect. He says that all things are created to be good referring back to the Creation story in the Bible, where God declares every single creation good. Evil, according to Augustine is simply the lack of good necessary to be perfect. There are degrees at which something can lack good, and the more evil it becomes. For example, disasters lack a lot of good, and because of that they cause harm, if disasters did not lack good, then they would benefit all of nature.

The second view, Augustine’s view, is the one that is taken by most european medieval philosophers to be the best explanation of “the Good” and the problem of evil. Then again it is wise to remember that most european medieval philosophers were theologians of the Christian faith.