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I find Eddings description a little simplistic; there are an awful lot of things it leaves out. One that sticks out to me is that it fails to take into account a very simple truth, namely that good itself, if taken to its extreme becomes as destuctive as evil; a purely good individual is as incapable of functionally exisiting in the world as a purely evil one would be. Remember technically, "selfless" doesnt mean kind or noble or generous it literally means "having no self". A truly selfless individual basically couln't survive, he would be incapable of doing anything for his own benefit. He could never eat anything, becuse he would always have to give priority to anyone else, incuding theoretical people who are not thier (i.e. "I am hungry and need this food, but someone hungrier than I may at some point come by, and need this food more than me"). A truly purely altruistic individual (which is what Eddings seems to be sugessting to be a perfectly "good" indvidual) would have to give other desires, no matter how small and petty greater priority than his own, no matter how great, in fact he couldn't give his own needs any priorty at all. To Use an exmaple I once used in ethics class, if a perfectly altruistic person was walking down the street with a loaded gun, and met a person who wanted for whatever reason to kill him but who was unarmed, he would be obigated to give the person the gun so that he could use it to kill him, since fulfilling the other persons desire (to kill him) would be more important to him than his own desire (to stay alive). A truly "good" society under Eddings defintion would basically be like a beehive or ant colony, (if the hive/colony and the queen are considered interchagalbe one being the same as the other.) at least thats how I see it.
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