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Very few contemporary philosophers are especially concerned with whether there is or could be a sumum bonum.

Of course, philosophers used to take it that developing an account of the highest good was crucial to work in ethics and political philosophy,

and on some views even to work in speculative or theoretical philosophy.

That we needed to understand the highest good was a commonplace in ancient Greek philosophy,

for example, and interested in what might count as the highest good continued on through

into 18th and 19th century European philosophy.

In these more recent forays into thought about the highest good, that's 18th, 19th century

more recent, European philosophers often associated developing an account of the highest

good with advancing our efforts to understand the foundations of right action, sound

practical thinking, and duty.

In contemporary Anglophone philosophy, these topics are treated as matters of morality.

What such philosophers tend to frame as concern over

the right rather than the good. It's not clear that this way of framing and directing concern

over the highest good fits older work. It's perfectly clear that it does not fit the

older work that will most concern me, work by St. Thomas Aquinas. I will not investigate the

ways in which Aquinas' work on the highest good intersects with his work on acting well, but the relationship

between these two strands of his thought cannot take shape in the way that it does in modern

thought. In this talk, I'm going to move toward Aquinas on the highest good from this side,

...