Nicomachean Ethics, Book I

Think about something you did yesterday. Pick anything ordinary: you went to the grocery store. Why? To buy food. Why buy food? So you could eat. Why eat? So you could stay alive and have energy. Why stay alive and have energy? So you could do the things you care about. Why those things?

Sooner or later, this chain of "why" questions has to stop. Either it stops at some final answer that you want for its own sake (not for the sake of anything further), or it goes on forever, in which case none of your actions actually have a point.

Aristotle opens the Ethics with this observation. Every human activity aims at some good. Some of those goods are pursued for the sake of other goods: you go to the store for the sake of eating. Other goods are pursued for the sake of something higher still. If this chain of means and ends does not terminate somewhere, he says, our desires become "empty and vain." There must be some good we pursue for its own sake, and it is this final good that is the proper subject of ethics.

Call this final good, whatever it turns out to be, the chief good. Aristotle's first move in Book I is to argue that there must be a chief good. His second move is to ask what it is.

Aristotle argues that whatever the chief good is, everyone already agrees on its name: eudaimonia. The word is usually translated as "happiness," but the translation is misleading.

When we say "happiness" in English, we usually mean a feeling. Someone is happy on their birthday, or happy when their team wins, or happy because the weather is nice. Happiness in this sense is a mood, something that comes and goes. Eudaimonia is not a mood. It is a condition of a whole life.

A better translation, which some philosophers now prefer, is flourishing. A plant flourishes when it grows well, produces fruit, and reaches the condition its nature makes possible. Eudaimonia is the analogous condition for a human being: not a feeling that visits you, but the state of having lived and being living a fully good human life.

This is why Aristotle says, in a line that sometimes surprises students, that we cannot really call someone eudaimon until their life is over. Not because eudaimonia requires death, but because it is the kind of achievement that belongs to a whole life, and a life can be ruined near the end. One bad day does not un-eudaimon a good life, but the assessment is always of the whole.

So Aristotle's claim is that everyone already wants eudaimonia. Nobody pursues eudaimonia for the sake of something further; we pursue everything else for its sake. Wealth is pursued because it contributes to a good life. Pleasure is pursued because it contributes to a good life. Honor is pursued because it contributes to a good life. But nobody sits down and asks, "Why do I want to flourish?" That is the terminal question.

The disagreement is not about the name of the chief good. The disagreement is about what eudaimonia actually consists in. Some people think it is pleasure. Some think it is wealth. Some think it is public honor. Aristotle thinks these answers are all wrong, and the rest of Book I is an argument against them and toward his own answer.

Here is where Aristotle does the central work of Book I. He wants to move from "eudaimonia is the chief good" (which everyone already agrees with) to a specific account of what eudaimonia is. His strategy is the function argument, sometimes called the ergon argument from the Greek word for function or work.

The argument goes like this:

This is the argument that drives the rest of the Ethics. Two things are worth noticing about it.

First, it is an argument that rests on Aristotle's teleological picture of nature. The move from "humans have a distinctive function" to "the good for humans is performing that function well" only works if you think things have natural functions in the first place. A lot of contemporary philosophers reject this premise, and the function argument is a standard target in the history of ethics.

Second, even if you grant Aristotle his picture, the conclusion is not fully settled yet. He has said the human good is activity of the soul in accordance with reason, performed well. But what does reason performed well look like? That is the question Book II takes up, under the heading of virtue.

Along the way to his own account, Aristotle rules out three popular candidates for the chief good. These are not strawmen; they are the things most people in his time (and most people in ours) reach for when asked what the good life consists of.

Pleasure. The life of pleasure is, Aristotle says, "a life for grazing animals." The objection is not that pleasure is bad. Pleasure accompanies the good life (a point he returns to in Book X). The objection is that a life oriented toward pleasure as its highest end is a life in which we are not using what is distinctive about us. Any animal can pursue pleasure. If that is the best we can do, we have wasted the capacity for reason.

Wealth. The life of money-making is ruled out quickly. Wealth is obviously a means to something else: nobody wants wealth for its own sake, they want wealth in order to buy things or secure things that actually contribute to living well. A chief good has to be something pursued for its own sake. Money fails that test.

Honor. This is the harder case. Many ambitious people pursue public honor, reputation, being recognized and respected, as the highest good. Aristotle's objection is subtle. Honor is something bestowed by other people. It depends on them, not on you. But the highest good should be something that belongs to the person who has it and cannot be taken away arbitrarily. What you want, when you want honor, is to be worthy of honor: to be the kind of person who deserves respect. And being worthy of honor turns out to be the same thing as being virtuous. So the pursuit of honor, once you see it clearly, points toward virtue as the real object.

This is a characteristic Aristotelian move. He does not dismiss the popular answers. He takes each one seriously, shows what is right about it, and then shows where it falls short. Wealth, pleasure, and honor all have a place in a good life. But none of them is what eudaimonia is.

Watch this lecture after you have read Book I and worked through the material above. It will reinforce the structure of the function argument and the key moves Aristotle makes in arriving at his account of eudaimonia.