How do we define what is good and bad?

Discussion between Socrates and Gloucon: 

(…) you certainly know that the majority believe that pleasure is the good, while the more sophisticated believe that it is knowledge.

Indeed I do.

And you know that those who believe this can’t tell us what sort of knowledge it is, however, but in the end are forced to say that it is knowledge of the good. And that’s ridiculous.

Of course it is.

They blame us for not knowing the good and then turn around and talk to us as if we did know it. They say that it is knowledge of the good—as if we understood what they’re speaking about when they utter the word “good.”

That’s completely true.

What about those who define the good as pleasure? Are they any less full of confusion than the others? Aren’t even they forced to admit that there are bad pleasures?

Most definitely.

So, I think, they have to agree that the same things are both good and bad. Isn’t that true?

Of course.

It’s clear, then, isn’t it, why there are many large controversies about this? How could it be otherwise? And isn’t this also clear? In the case of just and beautiful things, many people are content with what are believed to be so, even if they aren’t really so, and they act, acquire, and form their own beliefs on that basis. Nobody is satisfied to acquire things that are merely believed to be good, however, but everyone wants the things that really are good and disdains mere belief here.

That’s right.

Every soul pursues the good and does whatever it does for its sake. It divines that the good is something but it is perplexed and cannot adequately grasp what it is or acquire the sort of stable beliefs it has about other things, and so it misses the benefit, if any, that even those other things may give.

(…)

But, Socrates, you must also tell us whether you consider the good to be knowledge or pleasure or something else altogether.

What a man! It’s been clear for some time that other people’s opinions about these matters wouldn’t satisfy you.

Well, Socrates, it doesn’t seem right to me for you to be willing to state other people’s convictions but not your own, especially when you’ve spent so much time occupied with these matters.

What? Do you think it’s right to talk about things one doesn’t know as if one does know them?

Not as if one knows them, he said, but one ought to be willing to state one’s opinions as such.

What? Haven’t you noticed that opinions without knowledge are shameful and ugly things? The best of them are blind—or do you think that those who express a true opinion without understanding are any different from blind people who happen to travel the right road?

They’re no different.

Do you want to look at shameful, blind, and crooked things, then, when you might hear illuminating and fine ones from other people?

By god, Socrates, Glaucon said, don’t desert us with the end almost in sight. We’ll be satisfied if you discuss the good as you discussed justice, moderation, and the rest.

That, my friend, I said, would satisfy me too, but I’m afraid that I won’t be up to it and that I’ll disgrace myself and look ridiculous by trying. So let’s abandon the quest for what the good itself is for the time being, for even to arrive at my own view about it is too big a topic for the discussion we are now started on.

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