Section 4: What is the human good? There’s general agreement that it’s a happy life, but people have different views on what that is

The human good is a happy life

Let’s resume our inquiry. Since every kind of knowledge and every pursuit aims at some good, what it is that we say _[15] political wisdom aims at and what is the highest of all the goods achievable by human action. Verbally there is very general agreement: for both average people and those who are wise say it is a happy life (eudaimonia), and identify living well and doing well with being happy.

But when it comes to what a happy life is, _[20] they disagree, and average people don’t give the same answer as the wise. For most people think happiness is some plain and obvious thing, like pleasure, wealth, or having a good reputation. Yet such people differ from one another–and often even the same person identifies a happy life with different things; for instance, with health when he is ill or with wealth when he is poor. But when such people are conscious of their ignorance _[25], they admire those who proclaim some great ideal that is above their comprehension. Now some people thought that apart from these many good things there is some other good that is self-subsistent and causes the goodness of all good things. It would be pointless to examine all the opinions that people have held; enough to examine those that are most prevalent or that seem to have some argument for them.

Digression on the starting-point for inquiries about the good

Let us not fail to notice, however, _[30] that there is a difference between arguments proceeding from starting-points and arguments leading to starting-points. For Plato, too, was right in raising this question and asking, as he used to do, “are we on the way from or to the starting-points?” There is a difference, as there is in a racecourse, between the course from the starting-point to the turning-point and the way back. _[1095b1] For, while we must begin with what is known, things are knowable in two ways: some are knowable relative to us and some are knowable unconditionally. Presumably, then, we must begin with things knowable relative to us.

Thus, anyone who is to listen intelligently to lectures about what is noble and just, and generally, about the subjects of political wisdom, _[5] must have been brought up with good habits. For the fact that something is good is the starting-point [relative to us], and if the starting-point is sufficiently plain to a person, he won’t at the beginning need the reason as well. And the person who has been well brought up has or can easily get starting-points for our inquiry. But as for the person who neither has nor can get the starting-points, let him hear the words of Hesiod:

Far best is he who knows all things himself;_[10]
Good, he that hearkens when men counsel right;
But he who neither knows, nor lays to heart
Another’s wisdom, is a useless man.