This conception of the best life is not forgotten in the _Politics_ The
end of life in the state is itself well-living and well-doing—a life
which helps to produce the best life The great agency in the production
of such life is the State operating through Law, which is Reason backed
by Force. For its greatest efficiency there is required the development
of a science of legislation. The main drift of what he says here is
that the most desirable thing would be that the best reason of the
community should be embodied in its laws. But so far as that is not
possible, it still is true that anyone who would make himself and
others better must become a miniature legislator—must study the general
principles of law, morality, and education. The conception of πολιτικὴ
with which he opened the _Ethics_ would serve as a guide to a father
educating his children as well as to the legislator legislating for the
state. Finding in his predecessors no developed doctrine on this
subject, Aristotle proposes himself to undertake the construction of
it, and sketches in advance the programme of the _Politics_ in the
concluding sentence of the _Ethics_ His ultimate object is to answer
the questions, What is the best form of Polity, how should each be
constituted, and what laws and customs should it adopt and employ? Not
till this answer is given will “the philosophy of human affairs” be
complete.
On looking back it will be seen that the discussion of the central
topic of the nature and formation of character has expanded into a
Philosophy of Human Conduct, merging at its beginning and end into
metaphysics The result is a Moral Philosophy set against a background
of Political Theory and general Philosophy. The most characteristic
features of this Moral Philosophy are due to the fact of its
essentially teleological view of human life and action: (1) Every human
activity, but especially every human practical activity, is directed
towards a simple End discoverable by reflection, and this End is
conceived of as the object of universal human desire, as something to
be enjoyed, not as something which ought to be done or enacted.
Anstotle’s Moral Philosophy is not hedonistic but it is eudæmomstic,
the end is the enjoyment of Happiness, not the fulfilment of Duty. (2)
Every human practical activity derives its value from its efficiency as
a means to that end, it is good or bad, right or wrong, as it conduces
or fails to conduce to Happiness Thus his Moral Philosophy is
essentially utilitarian or prudential Right action presupposes Thought
or Thinking, partly on the development of a clearer and distincter
conception of the end of desire, partly as the deduction from that of
rules which state the normally effective conditions of its realisation.
The thinking involved in right conduct is calculation—calculation of
means to an end fixed by nature and foreknowable Action itself is at
its best just the realisation of a scheme preconceived and thought out
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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