Aristotle, Telos, and the Good Life: What Human Flourishing Actually Means pt. 1

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Aristotle's philosophical framework,
specifically his ideas about essence

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and his account of change moving
towards a fixed end, telos, generates

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the intellectual architecture
of the closed society, whether

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Aristotle intended this or not

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Hi, welcome to Notions of Progress,
the show that traces ideas of progress

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from antiquity to the age of AI.

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In the last three episodes, we spent with
Matt Ehret following his argument that the

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history of progress is a struggle between
two competing visions of civilization,

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one that builds and one that extracts.

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At the end of that argument was
a framework you may remember

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from episode eleven, the open
system versus the closed system.

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An open system, on Ehret's account,
develops its internal capacities.

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A closed one manages and
depletes their capacities.

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That framework raised a question
we set aside at the time: What

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exactly is being opened or closed?

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What is the standard by which
we judge whether a civilization

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is developing or declining?

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What does it mean to say that a human
being or a society is flourishing?

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This, by very nature, is
a concept of progress.

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Aristotle had an answer, and it
begins with a question most of

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us stopped asking a long time
ago: What is a human being for?

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In this episode, we are going
to work through three ideas.

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First, how Aristotle
understands the relationship

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between activity and the good.

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Second, what he means by telos.

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Telos, the end or purpose internal
to a form of life, and why it

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is grounded in nature rather
than assigned from the outside.

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And third, a challenge we will carry
into part two, posed by Karl Popper

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about whether any fixed account of human
ends is compatible with an open society

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Three terms will carry the argument today.

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The first is telos from the
Greek meaning end or purpose.

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According to MacIntyre's reading
of Aristotle, the telos of a mind

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of a thing is the end that it
is internal to its form of life.

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What it means for a thing of
that kind to be functioning well.

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A telos is not-- it's
not a goal you choose.

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It is whether you are oriented toward
virtue of what you actually are.

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The second, eudaimonia, often
translated as happiness, but

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more precisely to flourish.

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For Aristotle, eudaimonia is the full
realization of what human beings are

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capable of, what they can become.

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It is a life lived well, not a
feeling we are trying to produce.

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The third term is phronesis, which
translates to practical wisdom.

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We will name it here and return to
it in depth in part two and in our

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upcoming episode with Professor Atif
Ansar, where it will do real work.

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For now, phronesis is the capacity to
judge well in particular situations.

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It is how telos meets the world

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The question of what a human being is
sounds like an ancient idea, a-and, and

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it well may be, but it has not gone away.

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When we design institutions such
as hospitals, schools, and cities,

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we are making assumptions about
what well-being consists in.

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We are assuming, at least implicitly, that
there is something it means for human life

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to be going well rather than going badly.

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Aristotle's argument is that these
assumptions need to be examined.

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They can't be left implicit.

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The episodes ahead will test
whether they can indeed be grounded

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Aristotle himself opens the Nicomachean
Ethics, his work, not with a principle or

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a commandment, but with an observation.

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Every activity, every inquiry, every
pursuit aims at some kind of good.

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Archery aims at hitting the target, for
example, or medicine aims at health.

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Strategy aims at victory.

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Politics, and this is the one that
Aristotle cares the most about,

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aims at the good of the community.

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The claim is not yet a claim about
the fundamental nature of things.

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It is a description of
how human activity works.

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On Aristotle's account, we
are purposive creatures.

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We act towards ends.

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The question he then asks is whether
there is a highest good, one that orders

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and makes sense of all the others.

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Alasdair MacIntyre, in After Virtue,
his very well-known work on Aristotle,

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frames this as the foundational move
of the Aristotelian tradition, where

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enlightenment moral philosophy, on
MacIntyre's account, begins from rules,

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what should I do and why should I obey?

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Aristotle, conversely,
begins from character.

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What kind of person should I become?

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What does it mean for a human
being to be living well?

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So the key here is the shift from
virtue to rule following, MacIntyre

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argues, is the defining mark of
what went wrong in modern ethics.

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Rules without a prior account of what
human beings are for cannot carry the

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moral weight we ask of them, he claims.

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MacIntyre makes this point
with characteristic directness.

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Aristotle takes himself not to
be inventing an account of the

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virtues, but to be articulating
what is already implicit in thought.

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He is not constructing a
system from first principles.

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He is giving rational form to what
the best practice already assumes.

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MacIntyre walks through Aristotle's
arguments against the rival

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candidates for the highest good.

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Money, he claims, is always pursued
for the sake of something else.

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It is never a final end, a final good.

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Honor depends on the opinion of others.

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What it means cannot
be the good in itself.

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Additionally, pleasure accompanies
successful activity, but it

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does not constitute it, meaning
that pleasure is not a good in

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itself according to this model.

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The name Aristotle gives to the highest
good, the overarching good, is eudaimonia.

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The translation is genuinely difficult,
but it roughly equates to something

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along the lines of flourishing.

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This is an important concept, and
MacIntyre suggests that we think of

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it as being well and doing well, a
state in which a person is both in good

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condition and acting from that condition.

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So what does eudaimonia consist in?

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Well, MacIntyre, reading
Aristotle carefully in this point,

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distinguishes two senses of the
relationship between means and ends.

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This is the heart.

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In one sense, means and end are separable.

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You can achieve the same
end by different means.

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But MacIntyre argues that for Aristotle,
the virtues, courage, justice,

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practical wisdom, temperance, are not
related to eudaimonia in that way.

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What constitutes a complete human life
lived at its best already includes

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the exercise of these virtues.

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So in other words, this isn't the pathway.

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This is already part of how they operate.

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They are, in MacIntyre's reading,
partly constitutive of the end.

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They are, in MacIntyre's reading,
partly constitutive of the end,

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not merely instrumental to it.

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So what MacIntyre's reading of Aristotle
turns on is this: the question of how to

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live well cannot be separated from the
question of what kind of a person to be.

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The two are one and the same.

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The highest good is not a
target you hit by the right

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sequence of actions, therefore.

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It is a form of life that you inhabit
through the cultivation of character

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One of the most persistent
problems in reading Aristotle is

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a misreading that often occurs.

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Scholars who have spent careers
defending Aristotle's account of telos,

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including Philippa Foot and Alasdair
MacIntyre, often begin by addressing

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a suspicion that attaches itself to
the concept almost automatically.

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And it goes like this, that any fixed
account of what human beings are for

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must be at bottom a blueprint of control.

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This is their interpretation of
how people misinterpret Aristotle,

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and it turns into a suspicion.

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The suspicion runs like this.

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If there is a fixed end built into
human nature, they claim that this is

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Aristotle's motives, then someone, a
philosopher, a priest, a state, must be

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in a position to specify and enforce it.

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So both Foot and MacIntyre both argued
that this suspicion, however, though

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understandable, rests on a fundamental
confusion on their part about how this

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kind of evaluation actually works.

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Understanding that confusion
is the work of this section.

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Philippa Foot, in her work Natural
Goodness, provides an account of

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how this kind of evaluation works.

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Her argument starts with a simple example.

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When we say that a wolf is defective
because it cannot run, we're not imposing

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an external standard onto the wolf.

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We're recognizing something about what
a wolf is, the essence of that wolf.

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So what it needs to do to
live and flourish as a wolf.

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The evaluation is grounded in the
natural form of life of the species.

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So a wolf with defective legs is, in a
perfectly straightforward sense, a bad

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wolf, not because we disapprove of it, but
because it is failing to be what a wolf

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character, characteristically is and does.

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So Foot extends this
logic to human beings.

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What counts as a good human life
is similarly grounded in what human

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beings are, their characteristic
form of life, their natural ends.

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And this is Aristotle's telos
argument made in the language

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of contemporary philosophy.

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Without the theological premises and
without appeal to medieval frameworks.

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So Foot's argument is that the old
objection, you cannot derive what

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ought to be from what is, does not
apply to evaluations of living things.

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Saying what a number-- Saying what
a member of a natural kind needs in

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order to function well on her account
is a ki-- it's like a factual claim.

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So at this point, we need to
make a distinction that will

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prevent serious misunderstanding.

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One that has given some of the most
influential criticism of Aristotle,

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including the one we are about to examine.

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So Aro- Aristotle holds in his
work, De Anima, that the intellect

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begins without innate content.

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This, this is a term we're gonna
introduce here that you've heard before.

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What he's saying is, the mind at
birth is like a writing tablet on

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which nothing has been inscribed.

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This is often referred to as, as
Aristotle's idea of tabula rasa.

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All knowledge, he claims,
comes through the senses and

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is built up through experience.

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This is Aristotle's account of how we come
to know things, our epistemological path.

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But there's an important
distinction to note here.

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His account of how we come to
know things is not the same

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as his account of what we are.

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So that's where the
confusion often creeps in.

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The claim that human beings have
a telos, a natural end internal

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to their form, is not a claim
about what we are born knowing.

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It is a claim about what we actually are.

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A blank state in terms of
knowledge is entirely compatible

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with a determinant natural form.

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So we often hear about the acorn
does not know it's going to become

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an oak tree, but it is nonetheless
going to become an oak tree.

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In MacIntyre's reading of Aristotle,
the form of the human good is

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not what we are born knowing.

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It is what Aristotle holds we are
oriented towards by virtue of what we are.

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So by treating Aristotle's openness about
how we come to know things as license for

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the conclusion that human nature is in
itself plastic and endlessly revisable,

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that is, according to MacIntyre, the root
error in some of the most influential

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criticisms of Aristotelian ethics.

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MacIntyre's entire defense of
Aristotle depends on keeping these

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two things absolutely separate.

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We need to keep that in mind
when we turn to our last person,

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our last theorist, Karl Popper.

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What Foot and MacIntyre both
argue is that the telos is not a

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specification imposed from the outside.

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It is on their reading of Aristotle,
the internal logic of a form of

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life, what it means for a thing of
that kind to be functioning well.

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The blank state is about
how we come to know.

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This is back to the tabula rasa.

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So these things have to be
understood in a separate way.

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The human form is about what
we are, not what we know.

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Well, here is what Karl Popper charges

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In his well-known work, The Open Society
and Its Enemies, published in nineteen

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forty-five, he directs a sustained and
serious argument against Aristotle.

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Popper is not a careless thinker, and his
charge is not that Aristotle was a bad

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person or he had authoritarian intentions.

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The charge is structural.

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Specifically, his ideas about essence
and his account of change moving

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towards a fixed end, telos, generates
the intellectual architecture

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of the closed society, whether
Aristotle intended this or not.

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So you hear what, what
Popper is saying here.

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He's basically saying that because
of the acorn and the oak tree

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example that we discussed, he sees
this as a, as an archytype which

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describes a closed society, which
is what Popper is arguing against.

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At the center of Popper's argument
is Aristotle's concept of telos, the

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very idea that we've been working
with this in this episode, that every

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developing thing carries within itself
the seed of what it is moving towards.

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So Popper's argument is, uh, in
chapter eleven, is that this concept,

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however innocent it may appear in
Aristotle's account of nature and

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biology, becomes politically dangerous
when taken by others and when applied

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to peoples, nations, and states.

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So Popper's argument runs as follows:
For Aristotle, change is the realization

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of potentialities already present in
a thing's inner nature of what we are.

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The form or essence of a developing
thing stands at the end of its

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development, not at the beginning.

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And this generates what Popper identifies
as three ideas that later on Hegel will

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later inherit and push to their extreme.

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First That we can only know a
thing's inner nature through

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its historical development.

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Second, that development reveals a destiny
that once there was from the beginning,

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a kind of inescapable, essential fate.

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And third, that the inner nature must
unfold through change to become fully

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real, which means that self-assertion
and the drive to realize one essential

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nature become the fundamental categories
of both personal and political life.

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Well, the political implication on
Popper's reading is significant.

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If a person or a state has a hidden
inner nature that history is in the

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process of realizing, then political
institutions can claim to be the

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instruments of that realization.

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So this is very interesting, right?

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Because here he's describing, uh,
a built-in script, a powerlessness,

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if, if you will, of these political
institutions for something

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that's unfolding its own destiny.

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And a claim of that kind is not
easily subject to democratic

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revision, so it's very difficult
for people to refute when presented.

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You cannot vote against
what history requires.

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That's his basic argument.

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You cannot reform what essence demands.

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The closed society, therefore, for
Popper, is one in which political

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authority insulates itself from criticism
by just appealing to a necessity that

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transcends ordinary deliberation.

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Aristotle's telos then, on Popper's
account, is where the insulation begins.

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And Popper's charge is serious, and
it deserves to be taken seriously.

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MacIntyre, as we will see in part
two, argues that Popper has misread

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the relationship between telos and
political authority in Aristotle.

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So this goes back to what we were
talking about, that there's a

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separation between what we are and
how we learn, and this is essentially

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what, what he believes, what MacIntyre
believes that Popper is conflating.

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Telos, on MacIntyre's reading, provides
the standard by which political

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arrangements are judged, but not the
authority that exempts them from judgment.

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The tradition that runs from Aristotle
through Aquinas generates natural law as a

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constraint on political power, a standard
against which rulers can be found wanting

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But we'll talk more about
that in episode two.

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For now, the charge stands as the
question the episode is organized

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around, and it goes like this: Can a
fixed account of human ends, of telos,

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be compatible with an open society?

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And is Aristotle's telos the kind of
fixed account that Popper thinks it is?

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Popper's charge is not
answered in part one.

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It is posed a question and in
part two, and we will address it.

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It is a genuine question, and
it is not easily dismissible.

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So in closing, what this episode has
traced through MacIntyre's and Foot's

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reading of Aristotle is a framework
built on a single foundational claim,

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that there is such a thing as human
form of life, and that living well

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means realizing that form of life.

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Aristotle begins with the observation
that every activity aims at some

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kind of good, and whether there is
a highest good that makes the others

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intelligible, this is his claim.

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He identifies that good as
what he defines as eudaimonia.

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It's not a feeling to be produced,
but a form of life to be lived.

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And he, he grounds it in an
account of human nature, what a

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human being is for internal to
the form of life of that species.

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So what the episode has also
drawn is a distinction that

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will matter going forward.

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Aristotle's account of how we come
to know things holds that the mind

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begins without innate content.

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This is a repeat of what we
discussed before, the tabula rasa.

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His account of what we are holds
that human nature is not therefore

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blank or i- infinitely malleable.

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Those are things that are claims
at two completely different levels.

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The first does not undermine
the second, as Popper claimed.

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And we've introduced Popper's
charge that Aristotle's idea about

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essence and fixed ends generate the
intellectual architecture for the

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closed society, which he sees as a very
dangerous thing, especially following

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the, the events of World War II.

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In

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part two, we will ask whether Aristotle's
account means for practical wisdom,

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for the capacity to judge well in
particular situations, and whether

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MacIntyre's defense of Aristotle against
Popper can actually be sustained.

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The question this series keeps returning
to over and over is whether progress

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itself requires a prior account of
what we are progressing towards.

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So that's the question about telos.

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Aristotle thinks it does, and he thinks
he knows what that account looks like.

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Part two will be out in two weeks.

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The sources for both episodes, the
Nicomachean Ethics, MacIntyre's

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After Virtue, and Philippa Foot's
Natural Goodness, and Popper's Open

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Society are all in the show notes.

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Thanks so much for listening today.

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We look forward to
seeing you the next time

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00:21:00,436 --> 00:21:03,456
If you enjoyed this episode, you
can find "Notions of Progress" on

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00:21:03,456 --> 00:21:06,026
YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

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00:21:06,296 --> 00:21:09,586
And all the sources, reading
recommendations, and further context

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00:21:09,596 --> 00:21:11,546
for every episode are in the show notes.

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00:21:12,086 --> 00:21:16,156
If you are enjoying this series, liking
the episode on YouTube and signing up for

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00:21:16,166 --> 00:21:21,376
the newsletter at notionsofprogress.com
really helps more people find these ideas.

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00:21:21,946 --> 00:21:26,466
For those who wanna go even deeper,
the Curator's Flame blog and Substack

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00:21:26,496 --> 00:21:30,346
newsletter accompany each episode with
the questions the scholarship leaves open.

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00:21:31,026 --> 00:21:34,276
I'm Marshall, tracing ideas
of progress from antiquity to

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00:21:34,276 --> 00:21:38,126
the age of AI and leaving the
debates open for you to consider.

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Until next time