The following are selections from §65 of Volume I of The World as Will and Representation.
First, however, I wish to trace back to their real meaning
those conceptions of good and bad which have been treated
by the philosophical writers of the day, very extraordinarily, as
simple conceptions, and thus incapable of analysis; so that the
reader may not remain involved in the senseless delusion that
they contain more than is actually the case, and express in and
for themselves all that is here necessary. I am in a position to
do this because in ethics I am no more disposed to take refuge behind the word good than formerly behind the words beautiful
and true, in order that by the adding a “ness,” which at the
present day is supposed to have a special [solemnity], and therefore
to be of assistance in various cases, and by assuming an air of
solemnity, I might induce the belief that by uttering three such
words I had done more than denote three very wide and abstract,
and consequently empty conceptions, of very different origin
and significance. Who is there, indeed, who has made himself
acquainted with the books of our own day to whom these three
words, admirable as are the things to which they originally refer,
have not become an aversion after he has seen for the thousandth
time how those who are least capable of thinking believe that
they have only to utter these three words with open mouth and
the air of an intelligent sheep, in order to have spoken the greatest
wisdom?
The above sounds like the kind of thing the later Wittgenstein, at least, might have agreed with.
We now wish to discover the significance of the
concept good, which can be done with very little trouble. This
concept is essentially relative, and signifies the conformity of an
object to any definite effort of the will. Accordingly everything
that corresponds to the will in any of its expressions and fulfils
its end is thought through the concept good, however different
such things may be in other respects. Thus we speak of good
eating, good roads, good weather, good weapons, good omens,
and so on; in short, we call everything good that is just as we
wish it to be; and therefore that may be good in the eyes of
one man which is just the reverse in those of another. The
conception of the good divides itself into two sub-species—that
of the direct and present satisfaction of any volition, and that of
its indirect satisfaction which has reference to the future, i.e., the
agreeable and the useful.
Compare Hume: "personal merit consists altogether in the possession of mental qualities useful or agreeable to the person himself or to others" An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 9.1
This idea of good seems very much like Wittgenstein's idea of relative goodness or goodness in the relative sense.
It follows from what has been said above, that the good
is, according to its concept, ["something belonging to the relative"]; thus every good
is essentially relative, for its being consists in its relation to
a desiring will. Absolute good is, therefore, a contradiction
in terms; highest good, summum bonum, really signifies the
same thing—a final satisfaction of the will, after which no new
desire could arise,—a last motive, the attainment of which would
afford enduring satisfaction of the will. But, according to the
investigations which have already been conducted in this Fourth Book, such a consummation is not even thinkable.
Wittgenstein might sort of agree with this, seeing as he thinks talk of anything absolutely good or good in an absolute sense is nonsense. But he does not say that goodness is essentially relative, nor that absolute good is a contradiction in terms. He focuses, rather, on what people who use such words are trying to say.
If, however, we wish to give an
honorary position, as it were emeritus, to an old expression,
which from custom we do not like to discard altogether, we
may, metaphorically and figuratively, call the complete selfeffacement and denial of the will, the true absence of will, which
alone for ever stills and silences its struggle, alone gives that
contentment which can never again be disturbed, alone redeems
the world, and which we shall now soon consider at the close of our whole investigation—the absolute good, the summum
bonum—and regard it as the only radical cure of the disease of
which all other means are only palliations or anodynes.
Here Schopenhauer too adopts the words "absolute good" for a kind of metaphorical use. That much is a bit like Wittgenstein in the Lecture on Ethics. But Schopenhauer relates the absolute good to the denial of the will, which Wittgenstein doesn't talk about.
