"Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim"
About this Quote
Aristotle opens the Nicomachean Ethics like a man laying railroad tracks: if you accept this first plank, the rest of the system can move. The claim isn’t a sentimental hymn to human goodness. It’s a strategic definition. By saying every craft, investigation, action, and choice "aims at some good", Aristotle reframes ethics as a study of purpose rather than a set of prohibitions. He’s smuggling morality into the basic grammar of decision-making: to act at all is to act for an end, and ends are experienced as "good" in the moment of pursuit.
The subtext is polemical. Against Plato’s otherworldly Forms and against the Sophists’ rhetorical relativism, Aristotle insists on immanent, worldly teleology: meaning is baked into practices. Medicine aims at health; shipbuilding aims at seaworthiness; politics, more controversially, aims at a collective good. That "rightly been declared" nods to common belief while quietly upgrading it into philosophical infrastructure. He doesn’t need to prove that people chase goods; he needs you to notice that chasing goods is the only way actions become intelligible.
Context matters: Athens is a city where public life, education, and civic power are tangled, and where "the good" is a practical question with real stakes. Aristotle’s move sets up his central tension: if everyone aims at some good, why do our aims collide, and why do we so often pick badly? The opening line is less reassurance than a challenge: define the highest good clearly, or you’ll spend your life sprinting efficiently toward the wrong finish line.
The subtext is polemical. Against Plato’s otherworldly Forms and against the Sophists’ rhetorical relativism, Aristotle insists on immanent, worldly teleology: meaning is baked into practices. Medicine aims at health; shipbuilding aims at seaworthiness; politics, more controversially, aims at a collective good. That "rightly been declared" nods to common belief while quietly upgrading it into philosophical infrastructure. He doesn’t need to prove that people chase goods; he needs you to notice that chasing goods is the only way actions become intelligible.
Context matters: Athens is a city where public life, education, and civic power are tangled, and where "the good" is a practical question with real stakes. Aristotle’s move sets up his central tension: if everyone aims at some good, why do our aims collide, and why do we so often pick badly? The opening line is less reassurance than a challenge: define the highest good clearly, or you’ll spend your life sprinting efficiently toward the wrong finish line.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
|---|---|
| Source | Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, chapter 1 (opening line). Public English translation available (MIT Classics). |
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