real and apparent goods

[Mike182]

St Aquinas's case for "natural law" includes the idea that we as humans should act to achieve goodness - and all goodness comes from god because god is the only source of goodness

however, he also argues that we can be decieved by "apparent" goods, im struggling with understanding the difference between a real and an apparent good - can anyone explain this? if so, could you also give an example?

thanks in advance

mike

 

[michel]

Real and apparent good.........I understand the difference, but an example ? hehe maybe a real apple and the apple eve gave to adam.........

 

[Mike182]

Real and apparent good.........I understand the difference, but an example ? hehe maybe a real apple and the apple eve gave to adam.........

i don't know!

i really don't know!!!!

ok, remain calm - i guess that somethign that is apparantly good is something that seems good, but isn't! so an example of this would be .... .... .... .... hmmmmm

 

[Aqualung]

In my view, an example of this would be premarital sex. It's (supposedly) very physically satisfying and fun, but once you try to get married, it could cause a lot of problems betwixt you and your spouse. It was appearantly good at the time, but not so good anymore. Another might be a good job. This job brings you a lot of money, but in the end makes you greedy and stingy, when before you were very generous. I don't know, though. That's just my take on it.

 

[Fluffy]

A possible reason why you are struggling is that there might not be any "real" goods and therefore no rational/logical distinction between the categories, just an emotional reaction to given sets of data.

However, this isn't very satisfactory for me so I assume certain basics and try and keep my moral parsimony as low as possible so as to keep the chance I am acting on false premises as low as possible. I have found that this is the most successful (to my knowledge) way of forming a moral framework.