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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
It has been many years since the Classical notion of an objective, determinate account of the human good, applicable to all people, has played the central role in most moral theories. One contribution to this decline has been the Kantian belief that one cannot say what happiness is. Kant thinks that happiness is a purely empirical concept and is therefore dependent on contingent, unpredictable objects and states of affairs.
1 Kant, Immanuel, Foundations ofthe Metaphysics ofMorals, trans. Beck, Lewis White (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), 35–36 (418 ofthe Akademie edition).Google Scholar
2 Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Nidditch, Peter H. (Oxford: Oxford University pess, 1975), Book 2, chap. 21, §55, 269.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., Book 2, chap. 21, §55, 270.
4 Ackrill, J. L., “Aristotle on Eudaimonia”, in Articles on Aristotle's Ethics, ed. Rorty, Amelie (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980), 26. Originally published in Proceedings ofthe British Academy 60 (1974). As will become clear, this statement is too general; only goods of a certain sort can figure in the final end.Google Scholar
5 For further defences of the view that happiness is inclusive of other ends, see Ackrill, “Aristotle on Eudaimotia”, and also Keyt, David, “Intellectualism in Aristotle”, in Anton, J. P. and Preus, A., eds., Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy, vol. 2 (Albany, NY: State University of New york Press, 1983)Google Scholar.
6 I use this phrase rather than the now familiar “inclusive end” because, as will become clear, the latter phrase is not always used in such a way as to require that there be an ordering among the goods included. As I define a conjunctive end it is not simply a rag-bag of desired things that is created willy-nilly whenever one desires more than one thing. Many people who use the phrase “inclusive end” undoubtedly have the stronger notion in mind; but I think that clarity requi?es the new phrase.
7 Cf. Clark, Stephen, Aristotle's Man (Oxford: Oxford University press, 1975), 154–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 Unlike many other commentators (see, e.g., Ackrill, “Aristotle on Eudaimonia”, 32, and Keyt, “Intellectualism”, 370), I do not think that theorizing is incommensurably superior to moral action. For if these activities are not commensurable, it makes no sense to say, as Aristotle does, that the one is better than the other (see, e.g., NE, 1177a12–18, 1177b28–29; Metaphysics, 1072b24). I say that one activity is unbridgeably superior to another if the activities are commensurable, but there is no trading relation between them. Although this definition might sound paradoxical, it merely reflects the fact that commensurability requires nothing more than a common scale, and that the least value of one activity on the scale.might be greater than the greatest value of the other activity on the scale. For a fuller discussion of unbridgeable superiority see my “The Commensurability of Moral Action and Theorizing in Aristotle's Ethics”, forth-coming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
9 Nozick, Robert seems to have this point in mind when he speaks of value as degree of organic unity in Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981). See especially 505–517Google Scholar.
10 This view seems to follow quite naturally from a Christian conception of a personal God who is creator of everything (and, therefore, presumably, of its value). Moreover, God requires that one take him as the single end; to do otherwise is impious.
11 This procedure, again, leads to the question of how moral virtues can be present, given that one cannot have such virtues if they are valued only as means to other things. Aquinas appears to have no ready solution to this problem.