Fractured Goodness Aristotle's Response to Plato's Form of the Good

Aristotle offers a searing rejection of Plato's commitment to a Form of the Good; core among his complaints is that goodness is not univocal, that is, that there is no single essence-specifying account of goodness covering all the many varieties of goodness there are. Aristotle's anti-Platonic arguments have been variously received: many of his readers regard them as wholly successful while many others maintain they are abject failures. This volume reconstructs and assesses these arguments afresh and asks a simple question: if they are sound, what is left for Aristotle? In particular, what principles does he have to vouchsafe the commensurability of the good things he himself regards as commensurable?

1 - A View of a View of the Good
2 - Two Views of a View of a View of the Good
3 - A Series of Goods
4 - Goodness Across the Categories
5 - The Diversity of Sciences
6 - Goodness Itself
7 - Intrinsic Goods Alone: A Platonic Riposte
8 - Normative Considerations Reintroduced
9 - Good, Bad, Better, Worse
10 - Goodness qua Goodness: A Concluding Scientific Postscript?

Christopher Shields is Distinguished University Professor and Henry E. Allison Chair at the University of California San Diego. He was formerly Shuster Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and Professor of Classical Philosophy at the University of Oxford.