Jowett: absolute good

And an absolute beauty and absolute good ? PHAEDO  

Soc. The claims both of pleasure and mind to be the absolute good have been entirely disproven in this argument, because they are both wanting in self-sufficiency and also in adequacy and perfection. PHILEBUS  

And there is an absolute beauty and an absolute good, and of other things to which the term "many" is applied there is an absolute ; for they may be brought under a single idea, which is called the essence of each. THE REPUBLIC   BOOK VI

And so, Glaucon, I said, we have at last arrived at the hymn of dialectic. This is that strain which is of the intellect only, but which the faculty of sight will nevertheless be found to imitate ; for sight, as you may remember, was imagined by us after a while to behold the real animals and stars, and last of all the sun himself. And so with dialectic ; when a person starts on the discovery of the absolute by the light of reason only, and without any assistance of sense, and perseveres until by pure intelligence he arrives at the perception of the absolute good, he at last finds himself at the end of the intellectual world, as in the case of sight at the end of the visible. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

Fifteen years, I answered ; and when they have reached fifty years of age, then let those who still survive and have distinguished themselves in every action of their lives, and in every branch of knowledge, come at last to their consummation : the time has now arrived at which they must raise the eye of the soul to the universal light which lightens all things, and behold the absolute good ; for that is the pattern according to which they are to order the State and the lives of individuals, and the remainder of their own lives also ; making philosophy their chief pursuit, but, when their turn comes, toiling also at politics and ruling for the public good, not as though they were performing some heroic action, but simply as a matter of duty ; and when they have brought up in each generation others like themselves and left them in their place to be governors of the State, then they will depart to the Islands of the Blessed and dwell there ; and the city will give them public memorials and sacrifices and honor them, if the Pythian oracle consent, as demigods, but if not, as in any case blessed and divine. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII