Today's soundtrack is Eric Nagler: Improvise With Eric Nagler.
This afternoon's agenda doesn't give me much time for this post, so I'm going to continue Aristotle's Ethics. I'm going to read chapter four of the first book.
So, since I learned while reading the first chapter of Ethics that "'the good' is 'that at which all things aim'" (p. 25), what is the ultimate good? If we aim at the good, what do we achieve? Most say that it is happiness, by which they mean "living well or faring well" (p. 29). But the meaning of happiness is subjective; there is no agreed-upon definition of it. Some think it to be money or status or possessions; others say that it is good health, or fullness of knowledge, or the absence of a feeling of despair.
Aristotle here digresses and says that, as Plato gave example, we must begin an examination of anything by first looking at what about it we do know before we can move on to exploring that which we do not yet know. But we must first define what is known, for there is a difference, says Aristotle, between things that we know and things that are absolutely true. So if we can start with the things that are absolutely true, we will skip needing to ask "why" and then showing why and then providing proof of the thing, and we can start exploring sooner.
