[lit-ideas] Good, Better, Best, etc.
- From: epostboxx@xxxxxxxx
- To: Lit-Ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2020 23:44:26 +0200
On 13. Sep 2020, at 21:06, david ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Consider Genesis. The line isn’t “the earth was pretty good considering it
was made so rapidly.” Nope, the words are “It was good, period.” If “above
average” had been an option, I bet you’d read that right there in the text.
Trust philosophers to go a little further.
For Leibniz, this was/is 'the best of all possible words'.
It was in a game of Fictionary that I was introduced to a somewhat more
qualified view: the doctrine that this is a good but not necessarily best of
all possible words. This definition, given for the word 'bonism' was thought by
all players (a group of philosophy graduate students) to have been made up by
the player who found it in the copy of COLLINS DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH
LANGUAGE (Second Edition, 1986) which still graces my desk, and thus earned
that player winning points.
Chris Bruce,
wishing all a good
(if not necessarily the best
of all possible) night(s), in
Kiel, Germany
P.S. For those of you not aquainted with the game 'Fictionary':
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictionary
-cb
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