[MUSIC] The goal of life. Now we turn to Aristotle's ethical philosophy, which has come down to us in two different treatises known as the Eudemian Ethics and Nicomachean Ethics. Our focus will be on the Nicomachean Ethics, which is likely the later of the two works. It is standardly referred to by the abbreviation of its Latin title, EN, for Ethica Nicomachea. Now, the basic question addressed by ethics in the ancient tradition is a very broad one. How should we live? That is, how should we conduct our lives? We've seen that this is how Socrates formulates what he calls the most important question in his address to the jurors in the Apology and in his arguments with Thrasymachus in the Republic. There the question is, what is the life of the unjust person like? And how does it compare to the life of the just person? Which is the better life to live? Aristotle thinks that the way to address this basic ethical question is by asking a more precise question. What is the goal of life? For at least a thousand years after Aristotle, this became the central question of ethics known as the telos question, since telos is the Greek for goal. Different ethical schools were distinguished by the answers they gave to the telos questions. And we will soon consider Aristotle's own answer. But before we can appreciate his answer to the telos question, we need to make sure we understand the question. Now by the goal of life he means some end, some telos, of everything that is pursued in action. Sometimes he calls this the highest good, or the human good. We shouldn't be surprised that he alternates between calling it the end and the good, since in the Physics, where he identifies the final cause as one of the four causes, he calls it the end and the good. In the Physics, we saw that Aristotle insists on the controversial thesis that there are goals or ends in nature. But here in the Ethics, we are on less disputed terrain for the final cause, for it is uncontroversial that human beings engage in goal-directed behavior. Indeed, this is a pervasive feature of human activity, as Aristotle remarks in the opening lines of the Nicomachean Ethics. Every craft, he says, and every investigation, and likewise every action and decision seems to aim at some good. That good is the point or the goal of that activity. For example, I boil water every morning. Why? In order to make coffee. The coffee is my goal. I go for a walk in the afternoon. Why? In order to be healthy. Here you are watching a lecture on Aristotle. Why? Because you want to learn about ancient philosophy, or because you want to get your degree, maybe for both reasons. Can you think of anything that you don't do for a reason? Perhaps biting your nails or squinting in the sun, or other automatic responses. But these fall below or on the borderline of agency. They're more like digestion and respiration than things we do. But when we are acting or doing, not merely idling, just about everything we do has a point or a goal, or so Aristotle claims. Now you might think that playing music or playing a sport or spending time with friends are things you don't do for any particular reason. You just enjoy doing them. Well, that's a reason too. Pleasure or enjoyment is a very familiar goal of action. But more to the point, Aristotle would claim that even apart from any pleasure you may get from performing music or playing a sport, these are instances where the activity itself, the playing, is a goal. So let's take playing the piano. It's actually a complex set of bodily motions and perceptual responses. What's the point of sitting on the piano bench and moving your fingers all over the place? I'm playing a sonata. What's the point of chasing that ball all over the field? I'm playing soccer. These are cases where, as Aristotle points out, the goal we pursue is not a product distinct from the activity, unlike the coffee I brew or the boat that the shipbuilder makes. When you sit at the piano to play a nocturne by Chopin, performing the nocturne is your goal. The performance is not the product of your activity, something distinct from it, but it is the point to what you're doing sitting there at the piano. If you are an avid cyclist, then going for a long ride on the weekend will be another example of an activity that is a goal. But if going for a ride or performing music are goals, according to Aristotle, what are they the goals of? Well, going for a ride involves pedaling, shifting gears, signaling, looking at a map, watching the road, and so forth. The point of all this activity is cycling. Similarly, playing soccer involves running, turning, kicking, blocking, and guarding, and the point to all this is playing soccer. Playing a Chopin nocturne involves all the different things the right hand and the left hand are doing on the keyboard, as well as what the foot is doing at various times on the pedals. All of these activities are coordinated and unified by their point, which is playing the nocturne. Indeed, sometimes the easiest way to explain what you are doing in a complex situation is to cite the goal or the point. What are you doing? I'm doing tai chi, or I'm orienteering, or I'm keeping kosher. Now, Aristotle thinks what are you doing is a question that can be asked about your life as a whole. There are all kinds of things that you're doing in your life, maybe performing music, playing a sport, raising a family, growing a garden, having a career, participating in the life of your community, spending time with friends. But what is the point to all this? What is it all about? This is roughly the sort of question Aristotle is asking when he asks whether there is some end, some telos, of everything that we pursue in action.
