Abstract

Life and “good” are interchangeable, I think. Life is good, goodness life. Michael Thompson has recovered the understanding of life as goodness for contemporary philosophy. However, he errs in thinking that our life, human life, is a certain kind of life. And so he errs in conceiving the idea of the good by which we live as that of a certain kind of life. The idea of the good by which we live is not an idea, but the idea. This shows that our life is not a life, but the life. This essay develops a series of forms through which “good” is thought: external purpose, organism, external process, generic process. It transpires that they are all incapable of thinking the good which is thought and known in practical thought. This is life beyond the generic process, no natural life, but the life of the spirit.