Being a "good person"

Squall Leonhart wrote: »

I've always wondered is it a person's thoughts or actions that determines whether they will be thought of as a "good person" or a "bad person" by society at large.

For example, if a man is constantly thinking of murdering or stealing or saying hurtful things to people, or rape etc, yet never legally or morally outwardly sets a foot wrong, i.e., is polite, mannerly, helpful, diligent at job, responsible in the home etc, is that person a bad person masquerading as a good person, or is he a good person, or is he judged by his thoughts, is he a bad person.

No, he's a good person. Arguably, he's a better person than someone who doesn't experience these temptations, and therefore doesn't display the same qualities of courage, fortitude, commitment, etc, in controlling and resisting them.

Ethics is about what we do, in the widest sense. Thinking is only a small part of what we do. Making a moral assessment of someone based entirely on what he thinks, while ignoring his concrete actions, is flawed.

Squall Leonhart wrote: »

...I've always wondered is it a person's thoughts or actions that determines whether they will be thought of as a "good person" or a "bad person" by society at large....

That whosoever looketh
on a woman to lust after her hath committed
adultery with her already in his heart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_5:27%E2%80%9328

This was frequently discussed since ancient time . But you can make more sub divisions.
1.A person can think about something bad e.g. Getting revenge on his rival.
2.A person can have a desire to get revenge on his rival.
3.A person can intend to get revenge on his rival.
4 A person can attempt to get revenge on his rival.
5 A person can act (and succeed) to get revenge on his rival.

I think we can all have 'bad' desires but there is an important difference between 'desire' and 'intention'.
I think (imo) a 'good' person tries to pull themselves back at the desire stage e.g. tries to talk themselves out of the desire to do something bad.

It’s easy to fall into a habit of thinking of morality as consisting of a list of “thou shalt nots” - don’t kill, don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t hurt people, don’t exploit people, etc, etc - and that if you avoid doing these things, you are a good person. In this framework, thoughts which you keep to yourself can’t kill, cheat, hurt etc others, and so are irrelevant to whether you are a good person or not.

However, if you stop thinking of the moral life as a matter of observing a list of prohibitions, and start thinking of it as matter of living a good life, living virtuously, a different picture emerges. Living as well as you can, allowing and encouraging the flourishing of your capacities, talents, etc, definitely involves not getting mired in negative, egoistic, belittling, etc thoughts.

Plus, even if you think morality is mainly about how you treat others, and excludes how you treat yourself, it’s still more than a matter of not actively harming others; it involves treating others as well as possible, doing as much good as possible, conferring as much benefit as possible. And If I’m barely resisting the urge to strangle you, well, it’s good that I’m resisting the urge, but the fact that I feel the urge at all is surely going to get in the way of my being actively good to you, actively generous towards you, doing all the good for you that I possibly can.

Aristotle is very keen on the development of habits of virtue - the idea that training, initially by your parents and teachers and later by yourself - in acts of virtue develops virtuous impulses and habits and helps us to “internalise” the virtues - if trained to be generous, we actually become generous and feel generosity rather than envy; if trained to be honest we actually become honest and feel truthful rather than deceptive; and so on.

so on this view, the person who struggles with temptations to violence, dishonesty, etc and overcomes them, so that he treats people justly and fairly is certainly virtuous. But he would be more virtuous if he learned not to feel violent, dishonest, etc in the first place.

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Pedant. Clearly in context what people do meant their physical actions.

The fact that thinking is something people do is irrelevant to their morality.

If someone has a horrible inner life and a perfect outer one then it is on the latter that we judge them.

I'm not being a pedant. Our judgment of their morality can only be made on externals, but our judgment of their morality is not the same thing as their morality. What people think may be irrelevant to our judgment, since we cannot know about it, but it's not irrelevant to their morality, since it is in fact something they do that has moral significance.

Unless, that is, you want to make an argument that if we don't know about it, it can't have any moral signficance. Do you want to make that argument?

I think the question in the OP can be taken in two ways:

Squall Leonhart wrote: »

I've always wondered is it a person's thoughts or actions that determines whether they will be thought of as a "good person" or a "bad person" by society at large.

1. You could take the view that we only know a person's thoughts to the extent that they disclose them (and disclosing them is itself an action, not a thought) so, necessarily, our view of their morality will always be formed by their actions.

That's true, but trite. Our judgments can only be informed by what we know. Well, duh. That hardly merits a thread.

Or . . .

2. Perhaps the question invites us to assume for the purposes of discussion that we could have perfect knowledge of someone's thoughts and actions. If we perfectly understood a person's thoughts, and their actions, and any tension or conflict between them, would we consider their morality to be determined by their inner thoughts, which disclose character, the authentic self, etc etc, or by their actions, which are instrumental in creating happiness or suffering in others, etc etc.

Understood this way, the question invites an explanation of what "being a good person" is. Is it primarily a matter of having virtuous character, virtuous instincts and inclinations, or is it primarily a matter or doing good things, even if these may be done for less than good motives? That seems to me a much more interesting and fruitful topic for a philosophy discussion forum, so I'm inclined to treat the question this way. But others may take a different view.