I am going to start excerpting rather than quoting Aristotle in full. But, it should be relatively easy to follow along at the web-based version of the text. The following is from the section marked "4."

"Verbally there is very general agreement; for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that [the highest of all goods achievable by action] is happiness, and identify living well and doing well with being happy; but with regard to what happiness is they differ, and the many do not give the same account as the wise."

I'm not going to talk about the thread of elitism that runs through this portion. The important part is that "happiness" is a very popular answer to the question of what the most important thing in life is.

"Now some thought that apart from these many goods [i.e. pleasure, wealth, honor] there is another which is self-subsistent and causes the goodness of all these as well. To examine all the opinions that have been held were perhaps somewhat fruitless; enough to examine those that are most prevalent or that seem to be arguable."

Here Aristotle is setting up a little bit of an argument he is going to give shortly in the N.E. The basic idea though, to prime you for when he lays it out for us, is that I can give an answer to the question, "why do you pursue wealth?" and that answer might be that I can use it to pursue pleasure, or that I can use it to help people, etc. etc. And you can keep asking me why I pursue those goals, and eventually, I will hit the point where I say, "because it makes me happy." And if you ask why I pursue happiness, I don't come up with another goal; that's where my answeing stops. Happiness, as it were, is good all by itself.

Now, I've not spelled this out as carefully as possible, because it comes up again fairly soon and I will go into greater detail then.


I listed computer programming on my list of goals/pursuits. This is one that has been stagnating for quite some time, but I requested that my friend dennis come up with a programming assignment for me, and he told me to program mancala. So I did. I now have a program that lets two people play Mancala (strictly speaking, it allows them to play the Kalah variety of Mancala, which is the game most people think of when they think of Mancala).

So, I've spend a number of hours on it, and I learned how to program in Scheme (though this was made easier by its similarity to Common Lisp, which is what I was working in previously). I pumped out a bunch of code, which didn't quite work, but which allowed me to better understand how to structure the program, and then I rewrote it pretty much from scratch. It still didn't quite work, but it was much clearer what was going wrong, so I went through bit by bit and took out the bugs. I am going to talk to Dennis tonight about my code, to find out what I did right, and what I did in a way that works, but could have been done better.

Hopefully I'll proceed to another program sometime soon, and keep up my momentum. I'd like to keep working on programming until thinking about how to program is second nature (or maybe third, or something). Right now, there is a lot of having to slowly think through things that I am sure, with enough experience, would be obvious and easy to figure out.

It was really good though to get the program done. I'm not much for like, craft type things, or at least, I don't have a lot of experience with them, and while I'm learning how to play the flute, that's performance rather than creation/production. What stands out about computer programming for me is that it is an endeavor where I start with the raw materials (the basic built-in functions of the language) and produce this cohesive whole at the end (a playable 2-player Mancala game).

Anyway, it definitely feels good to make more progress on this front, since it has very little external structure, and all progress has to be the result of my own motivation (whereas, with, say, flute, I have the pressure of going to lessons and so forth, programming is an almost entirely independent venture).

Ok, I've rambled enough to make up for the few days of no posting.

I have been neglecting this for a couple days. The posting, that is, not my specific goals and stuff. I will get back to posting again tomorrow.

"Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions, any more than in all the products of the crafts. Now fine and just actions, which political science investigates, admit of much variety and fluctuation of opinion, so that they may be thought to exist only by convention, and not by nature. And goods also give rise to a similar fluctuation because they bring harm to many people; for before now men have been undone by reason of their wealth, and others by reason of their courage. We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with such premisses to indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and in speaking about things which are only for the most part true and with premisses of the same kind to reach conclusions that are no better. In the same spirit, therefore, should each type of statement be received; for it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs."

When Aristotle says that there is much variety of opinion here, we should not take him as saying that the truth depends on what people think. He is not endorsing a subjectivity or relativism here. He is suggesting that there is so much complexity, that the generalizations will frequently admit of exception. Think about it more like, as if geometry had to account for things that were roughly square among squares, and so it wouldn't be true to say that all squares have four right angles, because some near-squares don't.

"Now each man judges well the things he knows, and of these he is a good judge. And so the man who has been educated in a subject is a good judge of that subject, and the man who has received an all-round education is a good judge in general. Hence a young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it makes no difference whether he is young in years or youthful in character; the defect does not depend on time, but on his living, and pursuing each successive object, as passion directs. For to such persons, as to the incontinent, knowledge brings no profit; but to those who desire and act in accordance with a rational principle knowledge about such matters will be of great benefit."

Yeah, Aristotle makes no bones about it, the chillin's can't be studying this stuff. You're just not experienced enough to understand how it all works. The knowledge isn't useful until you've learned enough at the school of hard knocks to appreciate the value of rationally pursuing your goals instead of following your immediate passions.

"These remarks about the student, the sort of treatment to be expected, and the purpose of the inquiry, may be taken as our preface."

Bam. More on the purpose of my inquiry next time.

"If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is, and of which of the sciences or capacities it is the object."

What are we doing? We are trying to figure out what our ultimate end/good is. Why? Because we'll be better at pursuing it. What do we know about it so far? We know that it will be something that we desire for its own sake, and not for the sake of other goals. For instance, this rules out money, which is entirely desirable because it allows us to get other goods, rather than having any value in and of itself.

"It would seem to belong to the most authoritative art and that which is most truly the master art. And politics appears to be of this nature; for it is this that ordains which of the sciences should be studied in a state, and which each class of citizens should learn and up to what point they should learn them; and we see even the most highly esteemed of capacities to fall under this, e.g. strategy, economics, rhetoric; now, since politics uses the rest of the sciences, and since, again, it legislates as to what we are to do and what we are to abstain from, the end of this science must include those of the others, so that this end must be the good for man. For even if the end is the same for a single man and for a state, that of the state seems at all events something greater and more complete whether to attain or to preserve; though it is worth while to attain the end merely for one man, it is finer and more godlike to attain it for a nation or for city-states. These, then, are the ends at which our inquiry aims, since it is political science, in one sense of that term."

Yeah, the Aristotelian conception of politics is that it is the science of doing for a whole state what everyone is trying to do for themselves. Since (spoiler alert) we are about to find out that we are all pursuing happiness/the good life, that makes politics the science of giving everyone a good life. At the Rose Garden in Exposition park, there are two pillars. One says, "The end of all good government is the happiness of the people" the other says, "the foundation of every state is its education of its youth." Though I can't find any places where Aristotle says exactly that, looking at the above paragraph, it is pretty clear that he has the sentiment of that first quote.

Man, I wish politicians shared Aristotle's conception of politics.

Today, I practiced the flute for an hour and ten minutes. You know what's awesome? When practicing is so much fun that you look at the time and realize you should stop because you've been practicing for over an hour and have other things to do. That is so much better than practicing where you practice for ten minutes and can't wait to stop, which is what practicing was like when I was younger.

Learning to play the flute involves working on several different things at once.
1) Breathing with my diaphragm instead of not doing that,
2) Mentally translating musical notation into names of notes,
3) Mentally translating names of notes into fingerings,
4) Switching between different fingerings,
5) Getting the right shape to my lips (embouchure, for those of you who like fancy words),
6) Directing my air stream in the right way so as to produce a note in the correct octave.

It is challenging, but a lot of fun. I hope that I am able to get into the habit of practicing for around an hour every day, because I think that will help me make progress at a good pace.

I think the most important thing to take away from the chunk of Aristotle I included in this post is that we are doing this so that we are better able to pursue our chief good. The next section of the text is about why he can get away with ignoring counterexamples to his claims, and why the young'ens aren't suited to study this subject matter, and I'll have a post on that tomorrow, along with some more about the areas in which I am hoping to self-improve.

"Now, as there are many actions, arts, and sciences, their ends also are many; the end of the medical art is health, that of shipbuilding a vessel, that of strategy victory, that of economics wealth. But where such arts fall under a single capacity- as bridle-making and the other arts concerned with the equipment of horses fall under the art of riding, and this and every military action under strategy, in the same way other arts fall under yet others- in all of these the ends of the master arts are to be preferred to all the subordinate ends; for it is for the sake of the former that the latter are pursued. It makes no difference whether the activities themselves are the ends of the actions, or something else apart from the activities, as in the case of the sciences just mentioned."

In my last post, I listed the following as major pursuits of mine:

1) Philosophizing
2) Flute playing
3) Improvising
4) Drawing
5) Computer Programming

I am going to add to that:

6) Health/Fitness

I think this bit of Aristotle's text is pretty clear. There is a hierarchy to the various ends that our activities have. For a silly little example, consider dough-making and baking a loaf of bread. We make dough so that we can make bread. We value the dough instrumentally, because it allows us to bake the loaf of bread, and we consider the baked bread more valuable than the raw dough.

I have some of my own preliminary stuff to lay out before I get too deep into the Aristotle.

Philosophy is probably definitely my strongest interest. While I am glad I have other interests, Philosophy is the clear king, which is why it is pretty awesome that I get to make a career out of it. Improv is the most social of the interests on that list. Flute and Drawing are two that I thought about for a long time, but only picked up recently (and I am much more seriously pursuing flute than I am drawing). Computer programming has been a long time interest that I sort of toy with, and then step away from for long enough that I need to start back nearer to the beginning than would be ideal. Health/fitness is on this list because I am not in as good of shape as I want to be, and that is a goal that will require a great deal of active pursuit on my part.

I just noticed something wrong in what I said above, and I was about to change it, but it is illustrative of an important point, so I will talk about it instead.

Health/Fitness isn't an activity, it is a goal. Exercise would be an example of an activity with fitness as its goal. It is imporant to keep separate in one's mind the activity being engaged in and goal of that activity.

In the last post I noted that Aristotle was talking about ends as being determined wholly by the activity itself (or at least, it seemed that way), as opposed to caring about people's personal goals for various activities. That makes this a good time to make this point: At various points, I might disagree with Aristotle's game plan or outlook. For instance, my reasons for engaging in an activity seem much more relevant as far as my happiness is concerned than some purpose (determined externally to me) that I might not share. For now though, I am going to just flag the possible points of divergence from Aristotle, and try and follow what he is saying.

One last point, it may seem like I am going through the text paragraph by paragraph. I will probably start covering larger chunks of the text and focusing in on more specific points soon, but for now, I want to make sure I am not skipping over things that are really important, and the easiest way to do that is to make sure I'm not skipping anything at all.

I'm actually going to start somewhere other than the beginning. Because I think it is an important point for framing the discussion. In the midst of Aristotle's warning that children can't really join Aristotle while he pursues knowledge of what a good life consists in and how to achieve it, Aristotle points out the following:

"... the end aimed at [by our inquiry] is not knowledge but action."

So, the important thing to note at the outset is something I mentioned in the last post. What we are doing here is aimed at practical changes in ones life, not merely coming to some better understanding of things.

This is why I think about this as "Better Living Through Ancient Greek Philosophy." Aristotle effectively wrote a self-help book, and I would wager that is one of the finest such books ever written.

Bearing that in mind, let's look at the first thing Aristotle tells us:

"Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. But a certain difference is found among ends; some are activities, others are products apart from the activities that produce them. Where there are ends apart from the actions, it is the nature of the products to be better than the activities."

Right now, rather than delving into what's going on here, I am going to list some of the arts, inquiries, activities and pursuits that I engage in or have engaged in.

1) Philosophy
2) Flute
3) Improv
4) Drawing
5) Computer Programming

I am going to think about what ends and goods they have, and tonight, I will get into more specifics of what I am going to do on the self-improvement front.