Alex Dent [email protected] 10/02/22 14.

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Could the good life for a human being really be a life of contemplation?
Aristotle’s assertion that human eudaimonia is a life of contemplation requires three distinct
phases of argument. First, he argues that the ultimate good for humans is happiness, and imposes two
criteria for any ultimate good: that it must be desired purely for its own sake, and that it must be self-
sufficient. Second, he argues that the ultimate human good is activity of the soul with virtue. To
support this he compares other classes of things, whose good is expressed in their function, to man
and his function. A possible objection rears its head: if good as an end aimed at, and activity itself
aims at something, is it possible for the ultimate good to be found in activity? I believe, however, that
Aristotle’s argument survives. Third, he argues that the particular activity of the soul which confers
most happiness is the life of contemplation. Another, more serious, objection is raised here, regarding
the apparent neglect of any practical wisdom or virtues. Is this what Aristotle actually believes, and if
so is this sustainable? Analysing this idea in terms of man’s ‘function’ makes it more comprehensible
(following Nagel), but to agree fully with Aristotle I would be forced to ‘go along with the
interpreters who would make it more acceptable by blurring or enlarging its outlines’ 1.
The first stage of argument harnesses a teleological view of the good to show that happiness
(eudaimonia) is the ultimate human good. For Aristotle, a good is something ‘for whose sake
everything else is done’ (NE.1.7), as health is the good of medicine, or victory is in strategy. There
are, moreover, goods sought ‘for the sake of something else’, such as wealth or musical instruments,
but our ultimate good (criterion one) must be something ‘final’, and something ‘never desirable for
the sake of something else’. This seems to be valid; if a good is something for-the-sake-of-which, then
the best good must be the most for-the-sake-of-which. The ultimate good must also be (criterion two)
self-sufficient, insofar as it ‘makes life desirable and lacking in nothing’ even on its own. This is a
more ambitious claim, but acceptable in the context of Aristotle’s argument. For if we take the case of
flute-playing, as an Aristotelian example, we can see that the ultimate good (in this art) is playing the
flute as well as possible. Every other activity is done for the sake of this. There are, however, a host of
subordinate goods: we must find a good flute, we must make sure it is tuned, we must make sure we
are blowing correctly. But all these subordinate goods are for the sake of the ultimate good: if we are
playing the flute as well as possible, they must necessarily be fulfilled. So long as every particular
good ultimately subordinates to the ultimate good, the ultimate good must be self-sufficient. We are
left, then, with the final movement, that the only human thing which satisfies these conditions is
eudaimonia. Since this word means something like ‘living well’ (or even ‘success’ 2), it is not
necessary to dispute this idea.
The ultimate human good is therefore eudaimonia; Aristotle next wishes to prove that it is
also ‘activity of the soul exhibiting virtue’. For ‘a flute-player, a sculptor, or any artist’, he argues,
who have their functions, the ‘good and the well is thought to reside in the function’; a good flute-
player plays the flute well, a good sculptor sculpts well, and a good artist draws or paints well.
Humans, then, should have a particular function. But it cannot be nutrition, which is shared with
plants, or perception, which is shared with other animals, since ‘we are seeking what is peculiar to
man’. A principle seems to be introduced, that each class of objects should have a distinct and unique
function.
We may question this: does, for example, Aristotle believe that each distinct species of animal
(dog, cat, giraffe, etc.) have a distinct function? It is a similar objection that Nagel 3 raises, in his
example of a corkscrew-bottle opener tool, which uniquely combines two non-unique functions; what

1
W.F.R. Hardie, Aristotle’s Ethical Theory (1980)
2
D.S. Hutchinson, Aristotle’s ethics (1995)
3
Thomas Nagel, Aristotle on eudaimonia (1980)

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is its unique function? To the first question, we can reply that Aristotle would not consider different
quadruped animals sufficiently different classes to warrant distinct functions; their functions belong to
them as animals and that is it. But this is not altogether satisfactory, for Aristotle leaves no indication
of how broad these ‘classes’ should be to which functions belong. Are they different breeds, or
species, or are they kinds of organism? But surely if we name them differently we are perceiving
some difference which warrants a separate function? We can reply, instead, that a function of an
animal x is to do what it is to be animal x. This solves both objections. Each distinct species of animal,
qua that species of animal, does have a different function—a donkey, to be a good donkey, does what
it is to be a donkey; and the corkscrew-bottle opener’s function is not a composite of two non-unique
functions, but rather a unique function which incorporates this composite. Two further objections to
this solution raise themselves. Does this not stray uncomfortably close to a Form for each object,
given that Aristotle has rejected the Forms? And does this not potentially assign unique functions to
each and every particular? We can counter the Formal objection, by noting that Aristotle is primarily
concerned with the metaphysical Form applying across categories (NE.1.6); a unique function for
objects, within those categories, should not concern him. We can counter the second objection with an
example. My function, qua a classics student, is to study classics well; my function, qua a human, is
to be a human well. Each particular, to be a good member of a class, must perform that class’s
function well; what it does off the job is another class’s business.
Aristotle, then, can reasonably claim that each class of objects, including humans, has a
unique function. The only human activity which he considers unique is reason; but man’s rational part
is bifurcated, into a part which obeys reason, and the reasoning part proper. Since only the latter is
capable of rational activity, it is to this that we turn; and a human’s function must be ‘activity of soul
which follows or implies reason’. Therefore, he argues, a good human must perform this activity well,
and since to perform an activity well is to perform it ‘in accordance with the appropriate virtue’, the
ultimate human good is ‘activity of the soul exhibiting virtue’. To contest these steps, I would object
to Aristotle’s separation of reason from perception, his belief in reason as purely the domain of
humans, and his bifurcation of reason. Since his further argument, however, necessitates only some
capacity for rational contemplation in humans beyond other animals, and since this capacity seems
generally obvious, I will suspend my judgement.
It can therefore be accepted that the ultimate human good is eudaimonia, and that this is
activity of the soul with virtue. Aristotle must next demonstrate that the best activity of the soul is
contemplation. He begins by asserting that the ultimate good should be ‘in accordance with the
highest virtue’, and this ‘will be of the best thing in us’ (NE.10.7). This, I think, should be
uncontroversial. In my being qua student, my highest virtue will be expressed in studying classics
rather than in studying mathematics, since the part of my brain which studies languages is better than
the part which studies numbers. The best part in us, Aristotle argues, is reason or something other
rational part ‘thought to be our natural ruler and guide’; our ultimate good, then, is activity of the
reason with highest virtue; and ‘this activity is contemplative’. But Aristotle’s criteria for an ultimate
good are that it is both final and self-sufficient: neither of these points are yet proved.
Indeed, these criteria have forced interpreters into either disagreeing with Aristotle here, or
weakening his claim. Ackrill, for instance, as a representative of the former, believes that Aristotle’s
argument for contemplation is ‘broken-backed’ 4; Broadie, who prefers the latter, rejects that ‘the
worth of the practical is made to depend on an alleged relation to theoria’, but contends instead that
Aristotle ‘grounds the supreme importance of theoria in the value, already assigned, of excellent
practice’5. It is true that Aristotle accepts a life of moral virtue as happy ‘in a secondary degree’
(NE.10.8), and that he has previously accepted the existence of things both desirable in themselves
and for something else. This, I think, is the relationship which Broadie envisions between practical
4
J.L. Ackrill, Aristotle on eudaimonia (1980)
5
Sarah Broadie, Ethics with Aristotle (1991)

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virtues and contemplation. The criterion of self-sufficiency, on the other hand, is more difficult to
reconcile: for if contemplation is sufficient in itself for human good, then practical virtues are
implicitly not necessary.
The fundamental objection, then, seems to be that it is wrong to leave all practical virtues out
of an account of human eudaimonia. But Aristotle is not espousing this extremist view. He is careful,
for instance, to emphasise that ‘one will also need external prosperity; for our nature is not self-
sufficient for the purpose of contemplation, but our body also must be healthy and must have food’. If
we incorporate this into a teleological account of reason, we might say that food is necessary for
existence, and existence is necessary for rational activities. Aristotle’s view of moral virtues, I
believe, is similarly subtle. Life in accordance with them can be ‘happy’, but he stresses that a
contemplative man will only do virtuous acts ‘insofar as he is a man and lives with a number of
people’. They require, moreover, greater external equipment, since a just human needs someone to
whom they can be just, or a brave human needs someone with whom they can fight; a contemplative
man requires only himself to investigate the truth. Both of course require the necessaries of life.
Aristotle’s view therefore seems to be that practical virtues are not self-sufficient, since they cannot
alone make life worth living, and that they are not absolutely final, since they generally aim at some
end (a just man legislates to bring about harmony, a brave man fights to bring about peace). But is
contemplation perfectly final? It seems, of course, that contemplation seeks after truth. Once this truth
is found, however, we need not ask what its aim is; whereas we can say that the aim of harmony is to
promote goodwill between citizens and to prevent crime, or the aim of peace is to allow efficient
growing of crops and to allow fathers to raise their children. The discovery of one truth only allows
more contemplation. The final element of reason’s superiority, then, is Aristotle’s claim that it is
‘something divine’, and that paradoxically it would also ‘seem actually to be each man, since it is the
authoritative and better part of him’ (NE.10.7). The specifics of Aristotelian theology need not detain
us here. We should only note that, in this account, the idea of a definitional function (‘that around
which all other human functions are organised’) of an object arises again, according to which the
success of the object should be judged.
The good life, therefore, is not purely contemplation, but involves contemplation as its
ultimate good. For humans who participate in society (which, as Aristotle noted, is every human 6), the
practical virtues are also an element; for humans regardless of their society, it will involve provision
of the daily necessaries. Aristotle has, however, demonstrated that humans have a generic function to
think rationally, that their excellence lies in doing so as well as possible, and that this corresponds to
human happiness. It is, perhaps, a happiness built in his own image, but a valid happiness nonetheless.

6
N.E.1.7: ‘man is born for citizenship’