Today's soundtrack is Christcentric: Romans Vol. 1.
This afternoon's reading is the second chapter of the first book of Aristotle's Ethics.
Aristotle argues that something which we see as an end in itself - something that our other actions are a means of attaining - then that thing must be what we see as the absolute good. From this, he concludes that it is good that we should identify what that end is, so that we can make choices accordingly that will get us closer to our target. Aristotle believes that "the good of the community is clearly a greater and more perfect good" (p. 27) than the good of the individual, and says that if we are trying to act effectively to reach our target of good, we should look at the field that influences all others, from where changes trickle down to directly affect all other fields: political science. So, he summarizes, the search for an absolute good may be called "the study of politics" (p. 27).
