← See the axis · The highest good
ArgumentThe function argument (ergon)
Just as the good flautist is the one who plays well, the good human being is the one who does well what makes a human: that is where their good lies.
Supports
- For a flautist, a sculptor, a craftsman, the good and 'doing well' lie in their proper function, in the work they alone can accomplish. Let us ask the same: does the human being, as a human, have a proper work?
- Neither mere life, which it shares with plants, nor sensation, which it shares with animals, is proper to it: what is proper is the soul's activity in accordance with reason, the life of a being able to deliberate and give form to its conduct.
- Now the good of a thing is to perform its proper function excellently. The human good is therefore the exercise of this rational activity in accordance with the excellence proper to it, virtue, and this not for a day, but over a whole life.
Therefore So the highest good is neither pleasure nor virtue taken apart, but : the whole activity of a human life carried out excellently, with pleasure crowning it rather than being its aim.
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Deepenings
Why reason, and not life or sensation
- sets aside nutritive life and sensation not out of contempt, but by method: what defines the proper good of a being is what it shares with no other. Growing, feeding: plants do that; sensing, moving: so do beasts.
- What remains proper to the human is the part of the soul that possesses reason and the part that can obey it. It is therefore in a life guided by reason, not in what we have in common with the rest of the living, that our fulfillment is at stake.
How far does this reasoning convince you?
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Put to the test
Objection