Page 13 - GALIET OF BEAUTIFUL UNOIA AND EUDAIMONIA: ARISTOTLE IV

which is the right choice? Since, for Aristotle, it is senseless to pursue this line of questioning infinitely because it would lead to an infinite regress, he estimates that there has to be some point at which it is no longer necessary to ask further questions, that there must be an end towards which all these other desiderata are mere steps along the way so that we can answer what is the end for the sake of which we seek and do all things. Aristotle’s answer: we do things to achieve happiness. Secondly, in Book I and X of the Nichomachean Ethics,5 Aristotle’s conception of “happiness” is related to the ultimate good, the very last end:
“The chief good,” he writes, “is evidently something final...Now we call that which is worthy of pursuit more final than that which is worthy of pursuit for the sake of something else, and that which is never desirable for the sake of something else more final than the things that are desirable both in themselves and for the sake of that other thing, and therefore, we call final without qualification that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else. Now such a thing happiness, above else, is held to be; for this we choose always for itself and never for the sake of something else” (1097a 27- 30)
5 Aristotle. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics. Ed. Richard McKeon. New York: The Modern Library, 2001.
• 13 •