Quotation
Last reviewed:
“Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good.”
Aristotle · Aristotelianism · Ancient · c. 340 BCE
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that every craft, inquiry, and action aims at some good, and some of those ends are only steps toward further ends. A competing reading takes 'good' as descriptive of whatever an agent is in fact pursuing, not yet as a moral recommendation. The sentence is the first line of the Nicomachean Ethics, and it commits the book to looking for a highest end. That end will be called eudaimonia.
Did Aristotle really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. The opening sentence of the Nicomachean Ethics in a standard translation (Ross, lightly modernised). Secure in the work.
Where it comes from
Nicomachean Ethics I.1, 1094a
Approximate date: c. 340 BCE.
How to use it
A week packed with inbox, school run, and a late shop can still have no aim you would defend. Ask which tasks were only for the sake of something else, and whether that something is actually worth wanting. Motion between Tesco and the desk is not yet an answer.
A mindset reading
If you cannot say what a choice is for, you do not yet understand the choice. That test comes before any theory of virtue. The habit is to follow the 'for the sake of' chain until it either ends in something you respect or peters out.
Understand the philosophy
Aristotle is answering what ethics is about, before he defines virtue or happiness. A telos is an end, the point of a pursuit. He thinks human activity is pointed, and that pointing is toward what we take to be good. The rest of Book I asks which end is wanted for itself.
- ethics
- meaning
- happiness
FAQ
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that every craft, inquiry, and action aims at some good, and some of those ends are only steps toward further ends. A competing reading takes 'good' as descriptive of whatever an agent is in fact pursuing, not yet as a moral recommendation. The sentence is the first line of the Nicomachean Ethics, and it commits the book to looking for a highest end. That end will be called eudaimonia.
Did Aristotle really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. The opening sentence of the Nicomachean Ethics in a standard translation (Ross, lightly modernised). Secure in the work.
Which work is it in?
Nicomachean Ethics I.1, 1094a Approximate date: c. 340 BCE.