Tag: aristotle, ethics, plato

Plato in both the Gorgias and the Republic looked back to Socrates and asserted that “it is better to suffer tortures on the rack than to have a soul burdened with the guilt of doing evil.” Aristotle does not confront this position directly: he merely emphasizes that it is better still both to be free from having done evil and to be free from being tortured on the rack.

To call the Form [of the Good] eternal is misleading: that something lasts forever does not render it any the better, any more than long-enduring whiteness is whiter than ephemeral whiteness.