Every art and every inquiry and similarly every action and pursuit is thought to aim at some good, and for this reason the good has been declared to be that at which all things aim.
If there is some end in the things we do, which we desire for its own sake, clearly this must be the chief good. Knowing this will have a great influence on how we live our lives.
Politics appears to be the master art for it includes so many others and its purpose is the good of man. While it is worthy to perfect one man, it is finer and more godlike to perfect a nation.
It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of thing in so far as its nature admits.
Each man judges well the things he knows.
Men generally agree that the highest good attainable by action is happiness, and identify living well and doing well with happiness.
There are three prominent types of life: pleasure, political and contemplative. The mass of mankind is slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts; they have some ground for this view since they are imitating many of those in high places. People of superior refinement identify happiness with honour, or virtue, and generally the political life.
The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion since wealth is not the good we are seeking and is merely useful for the sake of something else.
Our duty as philosophers requires us to honour truth above our friends.
If things are good in themselves, the good will appear as something identical in them all, but the accounts of the goodness in honour, wisdom, and pleasure are diverse. The good therefore is not some common element answering to one Idea.
2 Comments