Ethics
Lecture 4: The Better and the Hierarchy of Human Goods

Transcript
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All the goods in human life, and which goods are better? And Socrates has been trying to convince his fellow Athenians that the goods of the soul are much better than the goods of the body and these exterior goods that we have. While the Athenians seem to be pursuing the goods of the body and the exterior goods, most of all, as if they were the greatest goods in life. Now someone might come along and say, Well, Socrates, if you love the goods of the soul more, they're better for you. But we love the goods of the body and exterior goods more, so they're better for us, right? In that case, you're saying something is better for Socrates because he wants it more, right? And these other things are better for the Athenians because they want it more, right? A lot of times people in daily life speak this way, don't they? You see? Mozart's better for you, Burkwest, because you want to hear Mozart more, right? And rock and roll is better for me because I want to hear rock and roll more. But notice, what this person is saying is that something is better for Burkwest or better for you because you want it more, right? But if that's so, then something would be good because you want it. And if that's been excluded by the previous argument, the ballgame is over now. You can't say that, right? Now you've got to give a reason, just like we did in our induction, give a reason why this is better than that, right? You can't simply say it's better for me because I want it more. Because the consequence of that would be then something would be good because you want it. But that isn't so, right? Do you see that? So I can argue formally either one of these ways, but I'm arguing basically from the same, what? Statement we learned last time. That something is not good because you want it. Therefore, it's not more good or better because you want it more. Okay? Do you follow me? Okay. So, now we've got to talk about what is better. Right? Now, you want to talk about that in general first, right? In general, what is better? Okay? Now, Aristotle, at the beginning of the so-called physics, in the beginning of the first book of natural hearing, he talks about how man knows things in a confused or indistinct way before he knows them distinctly and precisely, or so on. And from that, he reasons that we know things in general before we know them in, what? Particular. And that, therefore, the general is more known to us than the particular. And all good reasoning starts at what is more known to us and goes towards what is less known to us, huh? Charles de Connick said one time, he could do the whole modern philosophy as a denial of the more known by the less known. Okay? In other words, you know, a real disorder there in the modern mind, huh? Now, in general, what is better? You can see it, yeah. You can see a little bit more than that. Yeah? Sometimes people say, in general, the whole is better than the part. That's one very general statement. So is the whole chair better than just a part of the chair? The whole automobile better than just a part of the automobile? Your whole glass is better than a part of them? Your whole body rather than just a... Part of your body? Go back for a moment to the idea of the good, right? The good is what all want, right? Don't people sometimes want one thing for the sake of another? Okay. And you might call these two things wanted. One is the end, and the other is like a what? Me, right? Okay. Now, which is better? The end, yeah. Okay. Now, there's another very general proposition, and it very much stood up with the first notion of the good. The good is what all want, right? But I want medicine, let's say, for the sake of what? Health, right? So I want health, and I want medicine, right? But I want the medicine for the sake of the health. Which is better? The medicine of the health. I know. Yeah. If I could have the health and didn't need the medicine, I wouldn't bother with the medicine, right? Okay? So you could say that the end is better than what is for the sake of it. The end is better than what is desired for the sake of it. Now, these two statements are perhaps the most general statements you could make about what is better, right? But if you had to say which of those is more universal or more complete, more basic, which ones you choose? The first one seems in some ways more concrete, right? But could one of these statements, in a way, be led back to the other one? The part is for the sake of the whole. Yeah. So if the part is for the sake of the whole, then in a way, the whole is the end or purpose of the part. And so it's led back to the end is better than what is for the sake of it. Okay? So perhaps that's the most basic general statement, that the end is better than what is for the sake of it. But now, we can reason out a little bit that that statement is true, both by induction, like we did before, right? Which would be easier for us to follow. But you could also reason it out by e-syllogism, right? You could reason it out by induction, which would mean to start with particular examples of ends and what it's supposed to say for them, right? And see if we could see which one is better, right? And then induce in general what is the truth about this matter, right? You could also start with something more universal than this, right? And more difficult, right? But show it another way. Let's do it in both ways, right? Okay? So, let's take some examples here. We took the example already of health and medicine. Which is better, having money or making money? So the medicine is for the sake of the health, but we'd all agree that health is better than the medicine, right? Or making money is for the sake of having money, but having money is better than making money. 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Well, studying is for the sake of knowing, right? Which is better, being in Paris or flying in Paris? Being in Paris. So you've gone multiplying examples of these things, right? Which is better, the tile floor or the tiles? The brick wall or the bricks? You'd pay more for a brick wall than a firm. Than for a pile of bricks, right? Which is better, the wine sauce or the ingredients? You should go multiplying the examples, right? And you'll see in each piece that the end is better than what is for the sake of it, right? So by induction, you could reason that the end is better than what is for the sake of it, huh? Agreed? There's another way we can show this. And that is by a very universal statement that can be applied to this and many other things, right? So it's just the opposite in the way of induction, right? Induction you start from particulars and you send to a general, right? But in syllogism you tend to apply something equally or more universal usually to something less universal. Now, it's a very famous thing we can apply to this. I think I mentioned it before, but it's a very important philosophy. Now when Aristotle and Thomas, you know, these wise guys stated, you know, they're usually very brief. They say, then an account of which more so. That's what they say. Then an account of which more so. Parati kind of unfolded a bit, right? Okay. And I say, if the same belongs to two things, but to one of them because of the other, right? To which does it belong more? The cause of the effect. Yeah. It belongs more to the thoughts. Let's take a very simple example here, right? Suppose hot is said of the fire, right? And of the air around the fire. But the air around the fire is hot because of the fire. Which is hotter? Fire. Yeah. Okay. Or suppose sweet is said of sugar and by coffee. But it's said of the coffee because of the sugar. Which is sweet? Sugar, right? And a salty is said of salt and my French fries. But of my French fries because of salt, which is saltier. Okay? Now, let's take a little more profound examples, right? Take one application of this to logic. If known is said of the premises, to the premises. of the argument, right, and the conclusion of the argument, right, but it said the conclusion because of the premises, which is more known? Premises, yeah. And of course, if they weren't more known, you wouldn't use those to prove the conclusion, right? So notice, we reason from the premises by the syllogism to a conclusion, right? And so the conclusion becomes known through the premises, right? So that known can be said the conclusion finally as well as premises. But it said the conclusion because of the premises, right? But then the premises are more known to us than the what? Conclusion, right? Okay? Now suppose you're standing at the edge of the cliff there, right? And I put a log against your back there and off you go, right? That pole pushed you off the cliff, didn't it? And I did too. Which one of us did more so? Yeah, you're not going to bring up the pole and punish it, are you? Why punish me? I mean, I didn't even touch it. Well, it's because what? The pole pushed you off only in so far as it's moved by me, right? So in some sense, both the pole and me pushed you off, right? But the pole pushed you off because of me, right? So I'm chiefly responsible, right? See the idea? So the unmoved mover is more the mover than the what? Moved mover, right? It's a very important thing in natural philosophy, huh? Okay? Now, let's apply that to the end and what it's for the sake of the end, right? You could say good or desired, huh? Is said of the end, like let's say health, for example, and of the needs, what it's for the sake of the end, like, for example, medicine, okay? Both are good or both are desired, both are wanted, right? So something belongs to both of them, but belongs to one of them because of the other. So to be good or desired belongs to which one of them more, so to the end, right? Okay? You see the argument there, right? It's the same as with the idea there of sweet, said of sugar, and the coffee, right? It's said of both of them, but instead of the coffee, because of the sugar, right? Therefore the sugar is sweeter. So good or desired or wanted is said of the end and what it's for the sake of the end, but instead of what it's for the sake of the end, because of the cause being, right? The end, then the end is even more good, even more desirable than the means. You see the argument? Go back to the example there we had in an objection there, huh? Sometimes. If I love your kids, your children, because I love you, whom do I love more? If I love my neighbor because I love God, then love by me is said of what? God instead of my neighbor. But if my neighbor is loved by me, a charity, right? Because I love God, then whom do I love more? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So if I love my neighbor more than God, if I love my wife, let's say, more than God, am I loving my wife because I love God? No. If I love candy more than God, right? Am I loving candy because I love God? No. No. But if I'm loving my neighbor because I love God, then I must love God even more than my, what? Neighbor, yeah. You see the idea? You can apply this to an awful lot of things, right? Now, as I say, Aristotle says it so brief. On a kind of which, more so. On a kind of which means the one being the cause, right? It's more so, right? And you see Thomas going, yeah. On a kind of which, you see, more so. I have to spell it out for us, dimwits, okay? I classify myself as dimwit now, too. Classifier, Aristotle, and Thomas as wits, but I'm a dimwit, right? According to the famous division there of Hesia, huh? Best of all is a man who can discover these great things by himself, right? Next, the man who can learn it for the man who's discovered it, right? And the man who can either learn it from another or discover it himself, he's useless as far as now, he's concerned, right? So I divide us into wits, dimwits, nitwits, right? The wits, like Aristotle, Plato, the famous, they can discover these great things by themselves. We dimwits, we can learn them from the wits. The nitwits, they can do it either, right? I started to subdivide the dimwits into those who know who the wits are and those who don't know who the wits are. So I classify myself as an upper dimwit. Okay? But still dimwit. But don't quote me out of context, huh? That's why I named those three characters. But you find that division in Hesia, and Aristotle refers to it in the Nicomarckian Epics, and Thomas picks it up from there and so on. But you find it in St. Basil, and you find it in Bacchiavelli, right? That's that three-fold division. So there are people like, even the Church, people like Augustine, say, who can discover great things about the Trinity, right? Then there are other people in the Church who can learn them from Augustine, right? And then there's some people in the Church who can't do either one, right? And have to have a more simple faith, right? So, you see, the way we reason from this to that same conclusion, right? You can reason that the end is better than what is for the sake of it by induction, right? Which is better, health or medicine, right? Which is better, making money or having money, right? Which is better, studying or knowing, right? Which is better, winning or playing to win? So you might say, inductively, that the end is better than what is for the sake of it, right? But you can also, if you understand this general statement, you can apply it to the end and what is for the sake of it. Because here you have something good or desirable or wanted that is said of both the end and what is for the sake of it. I want to be healthy, I want to take medicine, right? But one of them I want because of the other. So, the end, which is the cause of the means being wanted, is more wanted, right? It's better than that, right? Do you see that? Okay. Now you know what better is, right? You can apply that again to a whole and a part, right? But the part, he says, is for the sake of the whole, right? Now, let's apply that to the disagreement between Socrates and the Athenians, huh? As revealed in the Apology, right? And Aristotle refers to this in many places, but most fully in the seventh book of the politics, right? He says this is a disagreement between the philosophers and most men. Most men act as if the goods of the body and the outside goods were the greater goods, right? And the goods of the soul were the lesser ones. But the philosophers are saying, no, the goods of the soul are much better than the goods of the body. But before we get into that conversation about which goods are better, let's give this division of all the goods of man. That's what it is. This is a disagreement about all the goods of a human being, all the goods of man, okay? Now, the Greeks were accustomed to divide all of the goods of man into usually three kinds. The names that they usually give to these were the goods of the soul, the goods of the body, and then the exterior, or outside goods, you could call them. Now, when Aristotle discusses this in the seventh book of the politics, he says, everybody knows that there are these three kinds of goods. And he says, they also all agree that we need some of all of them. But they disagree as to which ones are better. Even as a child, maybe in your mother goose rhymes or things of that sort, you might have touched upon this, huh? Most people have heard this one here. Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man what? Healthy, wealthy, and wise. Yeah. Now, the order of the words there is determined by rhyming and by alliteration, right? Because you have to use wise to rhyme with rise, right? Okay. And what? Healthy, wealthy, and wise. Healthy and wealthy rhyme, but wealthy and wise are literate. Okay. But notice those three goods singled out. Health is under which of these categories? Goods of the body. Goods of the body, yeah. Makes a man healthy. Wealthy. Which of these goods is wealth? Outside goods. Yeah. That's an excellence of the outside goods, right? The wealth. And wise, wisdom, that's the good of the soul, right? So even in that kind of a mother goose rhyme almost, I guess it goes back to Benjamin Franklin or something, but it's almost like a mother goose rhyme, we learned it as a child like that. You touch upon these three kinds of goods, right? Okay. And if you look at government, right, and the giving of laws, are there laws concerning all of these goods? There's no laws concerning the good of the soul, I think. Well, isn't there a law in the state of Massachusetts you had to go to high school until the age of 16? Oh, I see. Okay. Okay. There might be some laws about robbing, stealing, and murder, and things of this sort, right? Okay. Discourging city vices, huh? Okay. All kinds of laws about health, right? Sometimes they close down the restaurant because there's too many cockroaches around the restaurant, right? Sometimes, and of course, you go in the doctor's office, maybe you see a little thing, you know, the state of such and such, you know, so I can practice, you know. I can't go down and start practicing medicine on Main Street. I don't have any of this. The law is about these outside goods. I've got a driver's license in here, right? All kinds of laws regulating commerce and business and so on, right? Taxes. Yeah, yeah. So there are laws about all three kinds of goods. It's another sign that everybody kind of recognizes there are these three kinds of what? Good, right? And so they're talking about political debates now. Education, right? But that's nothing to do with the goods of the soul, right? They're talking about health issues and so on, right? Vaccines and so on. Okay, all kinds of health insurance and so on. And there are all kinds of things talking about the economy, right? There are tough jobs and all sorts of stuff, right? So, first of all, it's right, huh? At least in a confused way, everybody's aware of these three kinds, right? Okay? Now, is anybody who's in doubt of that second point? That we need some of all of these three. We need some outside goods, some clothing, maybe a chair, maybe some food, right? Nobody likes that, right? We need some of these. We need some health, some strength, at least to raise the food to your mouth, right? We need some of these goods of the body, right? Okay? You need a little bit of what? Courage, a little bit of moderation, right? Are you going to destroy yourself, right? Okay? A fool in his money or a soon part of it. A little bit of smarts to get your money or keep your money even, right? Okay? So everybody admits you need some of these three, right? So that's the agreement. The disagreement comes as to which of these goods are better, right? Now, if you say that these goods here are better than those, as the Athenians seem to act, is that right? Then, that's going to have tremendous influence upon your life. Because if these are the greater goods, your goal in life, so to speak, will be to get as much as possible of these better things, right? And be satisfied with the minimum, right, necessary to get or keep or preserve these goods, right? So you need a little bit of moderation to preserve your health, right? A little bit of smarts to make money or keep money, right? No? Okay. Protect your property and so on. On the other hand, if you think that the goods of the soul are much better than the goods of the body, mixed-year goods, then you're going to be satisfied with the minimum necessary of these things for living, and try to get as much as you can with the goods of the soul, right? You see? So your whole life is going to be weighted, what? Differently, right? Okay? But notice the second, maybe even more fundamental difference. If you go back to what we just learned, that the end is always better than what is for the sake of the end, right? If you think that the goods of the body and outside goods are better than the goods of the soul, then the end of human life, the goal of human life, right? The purpose of human life, you'll look for somewhere down here. Because the end is always better than what is for the sake of the what? End, right? So if these goods are better than those, the end must be somewhere down here. But if you agree with Socrates that the goods of the soul are much better than the goods of the body and exterior goods, and the end has to be better than what is for the sake of the end, then the end and goal and purpose of human life must be somewhere up here among the goods of the what? Soul, right? So this disagreement between Socrates and the Athenians is not a little disagreement. It's like between you and I, a chicken steak or something, right? Or liberation chocolate or something, right? No, this is a disagreement about all the goods of human life. right? And about the whole weight, you might say, of human life, right? Where it's weighted towards getting as much as possible of these goods, or getting as much as possible of those goods, right? And being satisfied with the minimum of the others. But it's going to be a disagreement also about the very end and purpose and goal of human life, what it's all about. You see that? But all of that follows, in a sense, from saying that these are better, or saying that those are better, right? Now, as I said, someone faced with this disagreement between the philosophers and the Athenians, or the philosophers and most men, might try to falsely address the question by saying, well, Socrates, if you love those goods much more than these, go for them, Socrates. That's for you. But we love these goods much more, so we're going to go for these ones, right? Well, what's wrong with that answer? It shouldn't be a balance, because you want it. Yeah. You're saying, in a way, that those are better for Socrates, right? And therefore, you should pursue them. Why? Because he wants them more. And these are better for the Athenians to pursue, because they want these more. But then you're saying, these goods are better for Socrates, because he wants them more. And these other goods are better for the Athenians, because they want those more. Right? That's it. It's true, so we'll say, you know, all this liberal thought. Okay? But if something is not good because you want it, then it's not more good or better because you want it more. So by our reasoning about the good, we have a starting point to reason that something is not better because you want it more. And now the Athenians are caught, right? Because they can't say that these are better for them because they want them more. And those are better for Socrates because he wants them more. The better gives some reason for saying, these are better than those. And you'll find that Socrates is almost all the reasons I decide. Okay? Now, sometimes I approach this question, which of these goods are better, in two steps, huh? Sometimes I lump these first two together, and I call them the inside goods, huh? Because you and I are composed of body and soul. So we call these the inside goods. And we ask the question, which are better, the inside goods or the outside goods? And then, after that, we can ask, which are better among the inside goods? The goods of the soul or the goods of the body, right? Let's ask the first question, which are better, the outside goods or the inside goods? Well, all we know, objectively, about what's better is what? We don't know yet. What do we know about what's better? What's better? The whole. Yeah. And we reduce the whole, in a sense, to the end, right? What we know, basically, is that the end is always better than what is for the sake of the end, right? Okay? Now, if you could show by induction that one of these is for the sake of the other, then you could syllogize, right? From that premise, and the premise that the end is always better, okay? Now, is one of these for the sake of the other? The outside goods are for the sake of the inside goods. Yeah, yeah. Now, again, the most proportionate way to show that would be by induction, right? Okay? Are my feet for the sake of my shoes? Or are my shoes for the sake of my feet? Well, at least I'd be told you now which is for the sake of which, right? Okay? Are my eyes for the sake of my glasses? Are my glasses for the sake of my eyes? Okay, son. Okay. Here's my... Either for the sake of my clothing, or is my clothing the sake of my body? If my body was for the sake of my clothing, I'd go on these mannequins down in the department store. So the clothing is for the sake of my body, right? Are you for the sake of holding down that chair? Or is that chair for the sake of holding you up? Are you for the sake of keeping the mattress firm? Or is the mattress to hold you up and give you a night's sleep, right? So inductively, you can see that the outside is for the sake of the inside, huh? Am I for the sake of getting my automobile to campus, I tell the students? Or is the automobile there for the sake of getting me to campus, right? If I could be in campus without the automobile, I wouldn't even power the automobile, would I? I'd stay home in the garage. Wouldn't even need it, right? Yes, eh? So inductively, by induction, you can see this conclusion that the outside goods are for the sake of the inside goods. But the end is always better than what is for the sake of it. Therefore, the inside goods are better than the outside goods, huh? And some of my objections say, well, what about the art of carpentry, huh? Because the art of carpentry is in the soul and the reason, right? It isn't the art of carpentry for the sake of these chairs and this table and other wooden things around here, right? Well, that's true. But those things are in turn for the sake of something inside, right? Okay? So the chair is for the sake of holding up your body and so on, right? In the same way, the art of making books, right? Well, that's for the sake of the book, the exterior thing, yeah. But the book is for the sake of my, what? Mind, huh? Is your notebook for the sake of, uh, you take, is your mind for the sake of taking notes? Are these notes to remind you of something? See? Well, the book is for the sake of my mind, right? So the outside is for the sake of the inside, ultimately, huh? You see that? I got a stereo, right? Put a stereo so I can play the Mozart CD, so my ear and what? Hear it, right, huh? So the outside is for the sake of the inside, right? You may have a painting over there, right? That's for the sake of what? I see this, right? If I couldn't see, if I was blind, I would have a painting, right? Okay? You see the idea? So by induction, we established that outside goods are for the sake of inside goods, either immediately or ultimately, right? And then we add what we learned about the better. The end is always better than what is for the sake of the end. Therefore, the inside goods are better than the outside goods. So we award for the outside goods, then, to use the Olympic term here, the bronze medal. Third place medal, right? Okay? Now, what about the goods of the soul and the goods of the body? Which of those two are better, right? Now, if you know enough about the soul and the body, you might be able to argue the same way, right? That the body is for the sake of the, what? Soul. And therefore, since the end is always better, then the soul is better than the body, right? But that's a little very difficult, you know, to know that much about the soul and matter and form and so on. So, there are some other ways you might reason, right? Okay? Which is better, a man or a beast? Yeah, man is better than the beast, huh? Now, someone says, I don't know that. I'm going to teach you like an animal, right? You'll be straight and I don't even teach you like, oh, boy! Okay? Because he knows that man is more than a beast, right? Okay? Well, the goods of the body are the goods we have in common with the, what? Beast, huh? But the goods of the soul, it's not just called by another name, the goods of, what? Reason. Reason, meaning not only the goods of reason itself, but what partakes of reason, like the moral virtues and so on. So, if man is... better than the beast is he better than the beast by the goods he has in common with the beast no so he must be better than the beast by the goods that he has that the beast doesn't have right and these are the what goods of the soul right so one way you might reason that the goods of the soul are better than the goods of the body is that the goods of the soul are the goods whereby man excels the beast right and the goods of the body he shares with the beast and you might have a beast that's stronger or more healthy than a man right sometime yeah or you might take the proposition that what god is better than what man right okay now which goods are more godlike the goods of the body for the goods of the soul which is more godlike the body of the soul no one thinks the body is more godlike than the soul does it no and he saw shakespeare in the exhortation to use reason he calls reason but godlike right okay or he calls friendship godlike so if the goods of the soul are more like the divine goods and god is better than man and another reason to say the goods of the soul are better than the goods of the what body right but perhaps there's another way of showing this besides comparing man to the beast right or comparing man to god and the fact that he shares these goods with what is less than himself the beast right and he shares these goods with what is better than him right um and that is to reason out what is the end or purpose of man right what is the end or purpose of what human life and if you reason out what is the end or purpose of human life then you might be able to use that as a starting point to say which of these is closer to the end or purpose of human life okay now the question is how do you reason out the end or purpose of human life take a little break at this point huh now plato in the um symposium that aristotle in the first book nicomachean ethics they talk about how we desire one thing for the sake of something else right but does this go on forever i desire a for the sake of b and b for the sake of c and c the sake of d and so on forever or is there some end that is desired for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else but everything else for the sake of it now what would lead you to think that there must be such an end that not everything is desired for the sake of the sake of something further the same one of those things where it can be an infinite series because there'd be no beginning well i mean numbers go on forever why can't ends go on forever must be a first mover well that's again you're going to go back to the same idea there's got to be a first cause but why right because some people you know you talk to them in daily conversation huh they would insist that everything is desired for the sake of something else right and that that turns out the story of my father's company my brothers and i used to work in the summer there in the factory and sometimes in the office and the only really educated guy there besides us was my father's engineer right university of minnesota and so he talked to us sometimes you know when we're studying and so on the philosophy oh what are you studying that for and he's saying well for its own sake but he just couldn't buy that something had to be for its own sake right it had to be for the sake of something else so after a few weeks he come back and first again why are we studying this for its own sake nothing further right so um finally since he couldn't digest our answer right it couldn't to make any sense to him he had to answer his own question right so one day he says to us i know why you're studying it he said why what's brain food he says so you study this food and you get your brain out and you go out you do something you know worthwhile with your brain or something you know but there's nothing that is for its own sake everything is good for the sake of something other than itself nothing is pursued as an end now you could say one thing about this if that's so then you're always like they say about the americans you know happiness is always one purchase away um if a is for the sake of b and b is for the sake of c and so on if you don't get c then either b nor a are really desirable so everything you're doing is for the sake of something it's going to be everything should not this point desirable but you never get to that thing right um but go back to to um the idea of one thing being desired for the sake of something else and is there a way you could reason that there must be something which is desired for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else but everything else the sake of it that everything is being desired the sake of something further here's a way you could kind of reason out that there must be such a thing which therefore would be the end or purpose of man right or the end or purpose of human life oh something some things are more desirable than others there could be something that was completely desirable or yeah yeah yeah notice this simple thing here right in terms of desire suppose i desire a for the sake of b right and b for the sake of c right c for the sake of d and according to this hypothesis this goes on forever right okay but now if i desire a for the sake of b then b is the cause of my desiring a right if i desire for example medicine for the sake of health i have to desire health before i could desire medicine right so before i can desire a i have to desire b but if i desire b for the sake of c then before i can desire b i have to desire c i have to desire c before i can desire b or a but if i desire c for the sake of d i've got a desire d before i can desire c or b or a right now if this goes on forever how can i begin to desire anything because my first desire would be for something that i couldn't desire until i desired something else so no place in the series could i begin to desire because anything i was to desire in that series since it goes on forever would presuppose by desiring something else first so i couldn't even begin to desire right do you see that so there must be something that i desire first and therefore not for the sake of something else right but everything else for the sake of it now sometimes they call that happiness right although that word is you know kind of degenerated in meaning yeah um but whatever you want to call that thing that is desired for its own sake right plato there and first all call it your daimonia where you're uncaught there must be such a thing right now the question is what is that right and there's style you can mark in ethics says that uh it would seem that to know what this is would have a great influence upon life right have a great weight huh because everything else is being done for the same catheter In a way, this is what the ethics is chiefly about. The end of man, right? The end of human life. The end that is desired for its own sake, and not for the sake of anything further, but everything else for the sake of it, right? Now, what is that? How would you reason that out, let's say? Aristotle, in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, you were reasoning this out, kind of drawing a line around it, right? And after he's drawn a line around it, he'll see the need to investigate some other things before he can say more fully what it is, right? Okay? But you want to see how he first draws a line, as he says in the Greek, carry around, draw a line around what this end is, huh? Of course, he's helped by his teacher 20 years, who was named, what, Plato, right? Now, Plato, in the first book of the Republic, had defined something that's very important in investigating the end of man, huh? Okay? And that is the definition that Plato gives in the first book of the Republic, a definition of what is meant by a thing's own act. Okay? What is a thing's own act? Okay? We have to know what a thing's own act is, because the argument for the end or purpose of man consists in seeing a connection between man's own act, huh, and in their purpose of, okay? Now, you can also ask the question, what is an end? And the definition of end, which is the one that Aristotle gives us in the second book of natural hearing, the basic meaning of the end is that for the sake of which. The basic notion of what is an end. That for the sake of which. So if I say health is the end of my taking medicine, I mean I take medicine for the sake of what health? If I say that knowing is the end of my studying, I'm saying that that for the sake of which I study is to know something, right? Okay? If I wanted to, you can say that for the sake of which something is or is done, right? Examples I was giving were examples of things that I do, right? I take medicine for the sake of my health. I study for the sake of knowing, right? Okay? I make money for the sake of spending it. And so on, right? So the end is that for the sake of which I'm doing these things, right? But you'd also say that the end of the chair, that for the sake of which the chair is, is your sitting, right? Okay? So something is or is done for the sake of something. But the basic notion of end is that for the sake of which, right? Okay? Now, Plato in the first book of the Republic there, works out a definition of what is a thing's own act. And Aristotle, I think, kind of presupposes this in the first book. Well, this is Plato's definition. It's what that thing alone can do, or at least it does better than other things, right? Okay? It's what that thing alone can do, or...