Aristotle: Highest Good

Everything we do seeks some good (end). Ends are better than the activities themselves.

Lower ends are pursued for higher ones (hierarchical)

The Function Argument

There is one good that all actions seek, values for it's own sake and nothing else (1.2)

If there were not this one good, desire would be empty and futile as they would go on for infinity (1.2)

Desire is not empty or futile. So there must be a final end.

Reason why Socratic view of happiness (virtue is sufficient) is wrong: 'it seems possible for someone to possess the virtues but be asleep/inactive'. Someone is happy depending on how they act, just as 'Olympic prizes are not for the finest and strongest but for the contestants' (1.8)

'But the best good is apparently something complete. And so, if only one end is complete, the good we are looking for will be this end; if more than one end are complete, it will be the most complete end of these'

There is an end to all disciplines

This end must be the highest good.

(Bostock) 'Personal Argument'

(Bostock) 'Impersonal Argument'

The highest of all these disciples must entail the 'highest good'

Political Science prescribes which other sciences should be studied and by whom -> it's end will achieve the end of the other disciplines

Hence the highest good is appropriately spoken of in terms of aims of political science

This will be the human good

EUDAIMONIA IS HIGHEST GOOD (= 'best possible life') 1.4

Also self-sufficient 'when all by itself it makes a life choiceworthy and lacking nothing'

What eudaimonia is