Physical health is good in two ways. First, it is the body’s good. When a body’s systems are healthy, the body is in good condition. Second, bodily health can be beneficial. For Plato, health is good for virtuous people but bad for vicious people. In other words, whether health is beneficial depends on whether its possessor is a good person.
From Plato’s Laws 661a–d:
ATHENIAN STRANGER: … The fact is, the things most people describe as good are wrongly so described. They say the best thing is health, with good looks second and wealth third. And there are any number of other things they describe as good: keen eyesight, sharp hearing, all quickness of perception when it comes to the senses; then again, being a tyrant and doing exactly what you most desire; and finally—the ultimate in blessed happiness—to possess all these things and then become immortal, without further delay. By contrast, what you and I say about these things, I imagine, is that they are all excellent things for men who are just and holy to possess, but that for people who are unjust they are disastrous—every single one of them, starting with good health. Indeed, sight, hearing, perception, being alive at all, is a very great evil for the person who is immortal for the whole of time, and who possesses all the things which are described as good, apart from justice and moral goodness in its entirety; and they are a lesser evil in the case of somebody like this who lives for the shortest time possible. … What I am suggesting is quite unambiguous: for people who are unjust, the things which are called bad are good, though for people who are just they are bad; conversely, for people who are good things which are called good really are good, whereas for people who are bad they are bad.
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