THE GOOD AND THE FORM OF THE GOOD IN PLATO'S REPUBLIC

Of these essays, about half pursue an honourable twentieth-century tradition of exploring in tandem substantive questions of ethical theory and the light thrown on them by Plato's thought about the good in the Republic. Others address related exegetical questions concerning the Form of the Good and its relations to other Forms in the Republic and in other dialogues. Three of the former group of essays also discuss exegetical questions relating Plato's treatment of the good and the Form of the Good to Aristotle's opposition to the Forms, and his alternative, but often quite similar approaches to the human good.

The simultaneous pursuit of questions in systematic ethics and in Republic scholarship arguably goes back to a single important source – H. R. Prichard's justly celebrated 1928 inaugural lecture, ‘Duty and interest’ – as modified by subsequent, mostly anti-metaphysical tendencies within Anglo-American philosophy. These latter tendencies see themselves as uncovering metaphysical confusions, logical errors (or errors about the logic of such-and-such concepts) and fatal ambiguities in Plato's treatment of the Forms and also in his treatments of justice and the good. These diagnoses of confusions, errors and equivocations have necessarily influenced post-Prichard analyses of the ethics of the Republic as well. But there they fell on ground well prepared for such diagnoses by Prichard's lecture. That lecture was not itself hostile to metaphysics in any obvious way.