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Finite and Infinite Goods$
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Robert Merrihew Adams

Print publication date: 2002

Print ISBN-13: 9780195153712

Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003

DOI: 10.1093/0195153715.001.0001

God as the Good

Chapter:
(p. 13 ) 1 God as the Good
Source:
Finite and Infinite Goods
Author(s):

Robert Merrihew Adams (Contributor Webpage)

Publisher:
Oxford University Press
DOI:10.1093/0195153715.003.0002

This chapter introduces the book's central theses about the nature of the Good: that God is the Good itself, the definitive standard of excellence, occupying roughly the role assigned to the Form of the Good or the Beautiful in Plato's Republic and Symposium, and that the excellence of other things consists in a sort of resemblance to God. These are presented not as claims in the semantics of morals, about the meaning of “good”, but as claims in the metaphysics of morals, about the nature of goodness or (more precisely) of excellence. The chapter explores philosophical issues about these views and their implications regarding the nature of God.

Keywords:   excellence, God, goodness, metaphysics of morals, moral semantics, Plato, the good

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