2. The Good as What All Desire: First Principles of Ethics

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Lecture Notes

Main Topics #

• The Inductive Argument for the Good: Aristotle begins the Nicomachean Ethics by surveying human activity—arts like carpentry and cooking, sciences like geometry and natural philosophy, and human actions and choices—to demonstrate inductively that all aim at some good
• The Definition: “The Good is What All Desire”: This opening statement serves as the first and foundational definition of the good, derived from observable human behavior and desire
• The Socratic Method of Definition: Moving from particular examples (candy, pizza, baseball) to universal definitions; the natural progression of human knowledge from sensation to reason
• The Question of Causality: Whether desire causes goodness or goodness causes desire; whether wanting something makes it good for us, or whether recognizing something as good causes us to desire it
• Acts vs. Products: The distinction between ends that are activities (like hearing Mozart) and ends that are products beyond the activity (like making a chair)
• Hierarchical Order of Goods and Arts: Different arts pursue different ends (medicine aims at health, military art at victory); these ends are ordered hierarchically

Key Arguments #

The Inductive Demonstration #

• Every art aims at some good: carpentry produces chairs and houses (goods for dwelling), cooking makes food tasty, medicine aims at health
• Every science aims at truth about its subject: geometry seeks truth about triangles and squares; natural philosophy seeks knowledge about natural things
• Every action and choice is done for some purpose or good, whether serious work or mere amusement
• Conclusion: “The good is what all desire” is well said because it captures what we observe across all human activities

The Socratic Method in Practice #

• When Socrates asks the young boy “What is good?” the boy first gives examples: candy, pizza, baseball, football, vacation
• Socrates then asks: What do these all have in common? Are they all sweet? Edible? Enjoyable?
• Through this questioning, the boy comes to recognize that he calls all these things “good” because he wants them
• This demonstrates the natural way of knowing: from sensory knowledge of particulars to reason’s abstraction of what is common
• The definition “the good is what all desire” emerges as the beginning of knowledge about the good, not its end

The Problem of Causality: Does Desire Cause Goodness or Vice Versa? #

Against desire causing goodness:

• Experience shows that people want things that are not actually good for them
• A man at a party wants another drink, becomes nauseated, and himself admits it was not good for him—yet he wanted it
• A young driver speeds on icy roads, crashes, and acknowledges it was not good for him, despite wanting to drive at normal speeds
• If wanting made something good, everything wanted would be good for the one who wants it, which is contradicted by lived experience

Against goodness causing desire (apparent objection):

• If goodness causes desire and badness causes aversion (its contrary), why do people sometimes desire what is bad for them?
• Why don’t people always desire what is good for them?
• How can goodness be the cause if its effect (desire) sometimes doesn’t follow?

Resolution through dialectical reasoning:

• Goodness is the cause of desire, but between the good thing and our desire for it stands an act of sense or reason (or both)
• Both sense and reason can be deceived, particularly by resemblance
• The bad can resemble the good, and the good can resemble the bad
• Example: Delicious poison—we desire it because it tastes good, not because it is poison; the good (taste) is the cause, though we are deceived about what is truly good for us
• This explains how people can want what harms them: they perceive (falsely) that something is good

The Inductive Argument from Natural Goods #

• Considering natural goods like air, water, food, sleep, and knowledge:
• Is air good because we desire to breathe? Or is it good for us apart from our desire, which is why we desire it?
• People recognize that air and water are good for human beings independently of whether they want them
• Sleep is good for us even when a child doesn’t want to sleep; parents know this and enforce sleep because it is good
• Money is good for acquiring useful things—do we want money because we desire it, or because it is useful?
• Knowledge is good in itself—knowing mushrooms are poisonous, knowing how to find one’s way home
• Through this induction: We can see in each natural good something that makes it good for us, apart from our wanting it; therefore, we want it because it is good

The Distinction of Ends: Acts and Products #

• Some ends are activities (acts), where the activity itself is the end: hearing Mozart’s string quartets
• Other ends are products beyond the activity, where a product is achieved: making a chair
• When there are ends as products beyond acts, the product is typically better than the act itself: a chair is better than the act of making a chair
• This distinction will be important for understanding how different goods and arts relate to each other

Important Definitions #

• The Good (τὸ ἀγαθόν): What all desire; that which is wanted; the object of desire and choice; initially defined through its effect on us (being desired)
• Art (τέχνη): A productive skill or craft aimed at making something external to the activity itself (e.g., carpentry, cooking, medicine)
• Science (ἐπιστήμη): Knowledge aimed at understanding truth about a subject matter (e.g., geometry about mathematical objects, natural philosophy about natural things)
• End (τέλος): The purpose or goal toward which an art, science, or action is directed; that for the sake of which something is done
• Desire (ὄρεξις): The inclination or appetite toward something perceived as good

Examples & Illustrations #

Arts and Their Characteristic Goods #

• Carpentry: aims at chairs, beds, tables, houses—goods for dwelling and living
• Cooking: aims at making food tasty (not necessarily healthy, as Aristotle notes)
• Medicine: aims at health
• Shipbuilding: aims at the ship
• Military art: aims at victory
• Geometry: aims at truth about triangles, squares, and mathematical forms
• Natural philosophy: aims at truth about natural things

The Socratic Method with a Child #

• Child asked “What is good?” gives examples: candy, pizza, baseball, football, vacation
• When pressed about what these have in common: not all sweet (pizza isn’t), not all edible (baseball isn’t)
• Child comes to recognize: these are all things “I want”
• Thus the child arrives at the first definition by his own reflection: the good is what all want

Examples of Wanting What Is Not Good #

• The man at the party: Wants another drink; feels nauseated afterward; himself admits it was not good for him
• The young driver: Speeds on icy roads; crashes and is injured; himself admits it was not good to drive that fast
• First day of ice: People want to drive at normal speeds but cause accidents; winter driving requires relearning (as Berquist’s father used to say)
• The corkscrew example: Berquist forgot a corkscrew at a picnic; without the proper tool, opening wine became frustrating; the tool’s lack of availability makes clear its utility

Natural Goods Known Apart from Desire #

• Air and water: Hard to deny that these are good for us apart from our wanting them
• Sleep: Good for us even when a child resists it; parents enforce sleep knowing its goodness; lack of sleep causes madness (cited from communist brainwashing techniques)
• Money: Good because useful for acquiring things; do we desire money because we want it, or because it’s useful?
• Knowledge: Good to know where to go, how to park, that some mushrooms are poisonous

The Heisenberg Principle #

• “To ask the right question is often to go more than halfway to the truth”
• Applied to Socratic method: the question itself, properly formulated, contains most of the path to understanding
• Example: In the Meno, Socrates asks the slave boy a series of simple questions about doubling a square, and through these questions alone, the slave boy discovers that the diagonal of a square is the side of a square twice as big
• Each question is simple and visible (“Could you put another square here?”), but through them, the boy arrives at a geometric truth

Questions Addressed #

Q: Is something good because we want it, or do we want it because it is good? #

Alternatively: Is desire the cause of goodness, or is goodness the cause of desire?

Dialectical argument against desire causing goodness:

• If wanting made something good, then whatever is wanted would be good for the wanter
• But people want things that are not good for them and later recognize this
• Therefore, wanting is not the cause of goodness

Dialectical argument against goodness directly causing desire (apparent problem):

• If goodness causes desire and badness causes aversion, everyone should always desire the good and avoid the bad
• Yet people sometimes desire the bad
• How can goodness be the cause if the effect (desire) doesn’t always follow?

Resolution:

• Goodness is indeed the cause of desire
• But between goodness and desire stands an act of sense or reason
• Both sense and reason can be deceived, especially by resemblance
• Therefore, something can be good, we can perceive (falsely) it as good, and desire it—even if it is actually bad for us
• The cause (goodness or apparent goodness) is still operative; the deception occurs in perception or reasoning

Q: How do we first come to know what the good is? #

Answer: Through examples and particulars (the Socratic method)

• We do not begin with abstract definitions but with sensory knowledge of particular things
• Reason then compares these particulars and abstracts what they have in common
• Thus we arrive at the definition: “the good is what all desire”
• This is the beginning of knowledge about the good, not the end; more precise definitions will follow
• This follows the natural order of knowing: from sensation to reason, from effect to cause, from what is more known to us to what is more known in itself

Q: Can the definition “the good is what all desire” be a complete account of the good? #

Answer: No, because it defines the good by its effect (being desired) rather than by its nature or cause

• Effects are more known to us, but causes are more known in themselves
• Later, especially in Book II of the Ethics and in Aristotle’s treatment of the four causes, the connection between the good and the end (τέλος) or final cause becomes clear
• We will see that the good is more fundamentally related to the nature and purpose (end) of a thing
• For example: medicine is good because health is good; the book is good because knowledge is good; the printing press is good because books are good—creating a hierarchy of goods ordered by their purposes

Notable Quotes #

“Every art, and every science, and likewise every action and choice, seems to aim at some good.” — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I.1

“The good is what all desire.” — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I.1 (cited as “it has been well said”)

“To ask the right question is often to go more than halfway to the truth.” — Heisenberg (cited by Berquist to explain the power of the Socratic method)

“The good is what all want” or “The good is something that’s wanted.” — Berquist, offering alternative translations