Episode 50: Greg Salmieri discusses the Aristotelian good life and productive work
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What is Aristotle’s ultimate “good life” and how does it relate to human activities?
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Hello and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast recorded at the University of Chicago. And he is here to discuss the Aristotelian good life and productive work. Greg Salmieri, welcome.
Thank you. Good to be here.
So a lot of contemporary ethicists are interested in Aristotle and sort of bringing him back. There's this neo-Aristotelian movement in ethics. But what was Aristotle really concerned with?
Aristotle's ethics starts with the idea of an end, that human activities all aim at different ends. Sometimes some ends are subordinate to others. And he asks, what is the end of everything we do? What is the end of a human life as such? And he tries to answer that question And his view amounts to that the ultimate end for any given agent is to lead a certain type of life. And he tries to define what type of life that is. Very broadly speaking, it's a life in which we develop and exercise a whole range of abilities that we have.
And so when Aristotle talks about, or rather when we, translating Aristotle, talk about ends, we mean aims or goals or something like that. So the ends of life are the aims or goals of life. I mean, one thing that you've talked about a little bit in your writings is this... point in in aristotle where he distinguishes kind of three kinds of life that you might think were the best kind of life three ends or three aims that you might think were the kind of fundamental aim that a life should be directed towards uh maybe you could say something about those what are the kinds of candidates for the best life that aristotle thinks there are
Yeah, he mentions three or four, depending on what you count as a mention, types of life that people lead, people who have some choice over what life they lead, and that's significant. But three or four types of lives people lead and tries to identify what the end inherent in each of them is. And one of these lives is the life he himself led, a life of study or contemplation, probably a better translation, theoria, the life of a philosopher or scientist. a life of contemplating the kind of eternal truths. The second kind of life is the life of a politician. Understand that not someone who's always seeking office and in the kind of swarmy way we sometimes think of politicians, but the life of a statesman, somebody who's involved with trying to achieve the best for his community.
the third that he talks about a lot of people leading which he has a less high view of is the life of gratification a life that seems to be aimed at pleasure and the fourth which he barely mentions because he thinks it's really ridiculous to think that this is what life is all about, is the life of money-making, a life aimed at money, which would seem to be a ridiculous thing to aim your life at, because surely the money is only valuable for the pursuit of some other end, perhaps pleasure, perhaps being of service to the city, perhaps theoria. So that he kind of just mentions to pass by.
Okay, so that seems like kind of a weird list, right? Yes, to me also. So, I mean, I guess, you know, we sitting here could put ourselves into one of those kinds of lives. I mean, we're all in some sense philosophers, but that seems like it's not going to be the case for most people. You can imagine a lot of people listening to this thinking, well... I'm not sure I'm doing any of those things. I'm not sure I'm living a philosophical, political, or a pleasure-seeking life. So, I mean, is there a way in which Aristotle's idea here is really going to be relevant to us and the kind of lives that we lead?
Yeah, I think that's a really excellent question, and it in some way speaks to the kind of social circumstances or political circumstances in Athens at the time, but I think there's also... something deeper behind it. Recall I said these are the lives led by people who have a choice in the matter.
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