The Purpose of Life, According to Aristotle

What is a good life? What is ‘Good’? Socrates and Plato would say that these are very difficult questions to answer, requiring an almost other-worldly kind of wisdom.

Not so for Aristotle, whose method brings us right down-to-earth. What is ‘Good’? Well, look around, what do you point at and say ‘that is good’?

That is a good car. That is a good view. That is a good job. That was a good investment. This is a good song. That was a good move. That was a good game. This is a good restaurant. They are a good cook. That is good food. I had a good time. You are a good person. That is a good dog. Socrates is a good example of a philosopher. That is a good argument. That was a good decision.

We could go on and on, but we won’t. The first thing we observe is that there are as many varieties of ‘good’ as there are things we describe as ‘good’. On the face of it, a good car has nothing in common with a good cook. Draw up a quick list of things that make a good cook and also a list of things that make a good car and I think you’d struggle to find much overlap. And yet they are both accurately called ‘good’. Now try to do the same comparison between a good cook and a good move in chess: you will find such a comparison barely makes sense, such is the difference between the two things.

You might think the obvious issue with this example is that cars and cooks and games of chess are very different things. But whether something is accurately called ‘good’ will depend on a range of different criteria, not only what kind of thing it is.

Even if we limited ourselves to just one thing – a good car, say – we would still find differences depending on criteria such as: a) the purpose of the thing (a good car does not break down, but many a much-loved classic is not all that reliable), b) the context of the thing (what makes a good car on a race track might be very different from on the road), or even just c) the person doing the appraising (some people value fuel economy in a car, others want raw power).

The only principle in common to all here is that the ‘goodness’ of a thing is determined in relation to its purpose, relative to the individual who is doing the appraising. What is ‘good’, for you, depends on what you want. If you want to cut wood, you need a good saw. The saw is ‘good’ to the extent that it fulfils its purpose of cutting wood. If you want to cut wood easily and efficiently, then you need a sharp and well-made saw. A saw is better the easier and more efficiently it cuts the wood. But its ‘goodness’ is determined only by the purpose that it is serving, relative to you, the one who is using it.

Goodness Serves a Purpose

This simple principle makes sense of all the diversity of ‘goods’ that we identified in our first observations. If you want a fast car, then a car is ‘good’ to the extent that it is ‘fast’. If you want an economical car, then a car is ‘good’ to the extent that it is ‘economical’. Essentially, does it serve your purposes? If yes, then it is ‘good’; if no, then it is not.

And these purposes are relative to individuals. Consider food: what counts as ‘good food’? For some, this means healthy food, full of nutrition and wholesomeness. Junk food is bad food, just empty calories. It serves no purpose!

For others, however, ‘good food’ is tasty food. When you choose your favourite food, you choose the thing that you most enjoy eating. Health concerns take a back seat. And tasty food comes in various forms. For some people, tasty food means fine dining, a gourmet meal, a delicate and varied tasting menu prepared by a top chef. For others, tasty food means a takeaway from the local pizza place. Both are accurately described as ‘good food’, if by that you mean ‘something I enjoy eating’; it depends on the individual and their purposes.

Even as individuals we find that our purposes and preferences change depending on context. Sometimes we might want healthy food, even if it’s not that tasty; sometimes we want something tasty, even if it’s not that healthy. It depends on what our purposes are at that time.

And even if we settled on a stable definition of what ‘good food’ was – say, because we decide that the true purpose of food is to provide nourishment, and healthy food provides the most nutrition, therefore healthy food is ‘good food’ – even then we would find huge differences between individuals. Consider the nutritional requirements of a top athlete versus those of a sedentary office worker. What counts as ‘good’ for one might be ludicrously inappropriate for the other. If we forced both to take the same compromised option, the athlete would be under-fuelled and the sedentary office worker would be obese.

Even if we confined ourselves within athletes, consider the different requirements of a Tour de France cyclist compared to a bodybuilder. One requires as much carbohydrate as possible; the other as little as possible. They are both ‘good’ athletes eating ‘good’ diets, but they are totally different. What is good for one is bad for the other because they have very different purposes.

The Chief Good

Aristotle sees all this variation and concludes that there manifestly cannot be one universal idea of ‘good’ that applies to all things at all times to all people. To go looking for it is a waste of time.

Instead, we should use the much more adaptable and down-to-earth idea that what is ‘good’ depends on the individual and their purposes. Wisdom is nothing more than being able to recognise what your purposes are, relative to who you are. The wise bodybuilder eats a lot of protein. The wise Tour de France cyclist eats a lot of carbohydrates. The wise sedentary office worker restricts their calorie consumption and tries to do a bit more exercise, but also enjoys a good pizza once in a while.

The only thing that we can say is common to them all is just that they have purposes. These are the broadest possible terms: We are all purpose-driven creatures. We all do things ‘for the sake of’ something. Bodybuilders eat protein to grow their muscles, Tour de France cyclists eat carbohydrates to give themselves energy, sedentary office workers restrict their calorie consumption to avoid being fat, but also eat pizza because they enjoy it and what’s even the point of working in an office if you can’t enjoy a pizza once in a while…

Just as with Aristotle’s hierarchy of categories, it seems that some of these purposes extend more widely than others. A bodybuilder eats protein for the purpose of building their muscles, but why do they build their muscles? To get bigger and stronger? To win competitions? The Tour de France cyclist eats a lot of carbohydrate for the purpose of giving themselves energy, but why do they need that energy? To perform well in the race and maybe win the competition? Now we observe that there is a purpose common to both the bodybuilder and the Tour de France cyclist: to win a competition.

And why do they want to win the competition? For money, for fame, for glory? Why do they want these things? Why does the sedentary office worker want to not be fat, but also enjoy a pizza? What is the purpose of these purposes?

What we are looking for here is what Aristotle calls the ‘Chief Good’; that is, the thing for the sake of which we do other things; the purpose of all purposes. This, he thinks, is happiness, or ‘living well’, because we always aim for happiness for its own sake, but we never aim for happiness for the sake of anything else.

People aim for wealth and fame because they think it will make them happy. They do not aim for happiness because they think it will make them wealthy and famous. Wealth and fame are not valuable in themselves; they are only valuable because they lead to other things, such as happiness or the ability to live well. Happiness, on the other hand, is valuable and desirable in itself, even if it doesn’t lead to anything else.

Happiness is at the top of the hierarchy of purposes: it is the ‘highest kind’ of purpose; it is the ‘why’ or the ‘that for the sake of which’ other things are done. It is, therefore, the final cause in our understanding of our various purposes.

According to Aristotle, that is the purpose of life: Happiness.

Postscript: Eudaimonia

It’s worth clarifying that when Aristotle says that the ‘Chief Good’, the purpose of purposes, is ‘happiness’, what he actually says is eudaimonia. This is often translated as ‘happiness’, but he means more than simply ‘feeling good’ or ‘pleasure’.

Something is lost in translation. Whilst English-speakers tend to understand happiness to be something that you feel, rather than something that is done – we say you feel happy or are happy, but we don’t say that you do happy – for Aristotle it would make some sense to say that to get or achieve eudaimonia is to do a certain thing. And whilst happiness is something that you experience, a good life is something that is done, so perhaps ‘a good life’ is a better translation for eudaimonia, except that it’s not very informative.

In truth, rather like Plato’s ‘Forms’, eudaimonia is a distinct Aristotelian term of art: the word means what Aristotle says it means. And when he describes it, it’s clear that eudaimonia is not only about being happy but also about ‘living well’ or what is sometimes translated as ‘flourishing’. We want to live well and not just live pleasantly. It’s not enough to feel like your life is good, it actually needs to be good. To have a good life, you need happiness in proportion to virtue; to be happy and deserve it. And Aristotle’s understanding of virtue is not just moral virtue but extends to all forms of ‘excellence’. In short: you want to be an excellent human being living an excellent life. This is what Aristotle means when he speaks of eudaimonia, the purpose of purposes, and it is clearly more than just ‘happiness’ or ‘feeling good’.

Read more: Think Well, Live Well: A Free Introduction to Philosophy