Ethical Problems: Good and Evil

Abstract

The words “good” and “bad” or “evil” are used in a number of different senses. This does not mean that the word “good”, e.g., has several completely disconnected meanings as, e.g., the word “post” or the word “plot” has. There is some connexion between all the senses in which the word is used. Some senses can be defined in terms of other senses, e.g. “good” in the instrumental sense can be defined in terms of “good” in one or other of its non-instrumental senses. And the different senses of “good” which are left when all the definition that is possible has been done have at least some kind of analogy to each other. A parallel case would be the senses in which we use the word “sharp” in the phrases “a sharp knife”, “a sharp answer”, and “a sharp lawyer”. Obviously we do not mean precisely the same by “sharp” in these three phrases. But it is equally obvious that there is some real or fancied analogy between them which we feel justifies the use of this adjective in all three.