A. F.

MACKAY

ARISTOTLES DILEMMA
(Received and accepted in revised form 25 January 2005)

ABSTRACT: In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle appears to use an elegant short argument to attack Platos doctrine of the good, which argument equally appears to attack Aristotles own doctrine of the good. I consider these two questions: First: Why does Aristotle reverse the judgment of Socrates/Plato on the issue: Which is better things that are (only) good in themselves, or things that are both good in themselves and good for their consequences? Second: Why does Aristotle attack Platos doctrine that the Form of the Good is the chief good, with an argument that appears to threaten his own view that eudaimonia is the chief good? I think the answers to these two questions are related. The elegant short argument in question I call Aristotles Fast Argument. After apologizing for criticizing views held by friends of his, Aristotle deploys the Fast Argument as a clincher to cap o his refutation of Platos view that the Form of the Good is the chief good: And one might ask the question, what in the world they mean by a thing itself, if in man himself and in a particular man the account of man is one and the same. For in so far as they are men, they will in no respect dier; and if this is so, neither will there be a dierence in so far as they are good. But again it will not be good any the more for being eternal, since that which lasts long is no whiter than that which perishes in a day. (Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1096 a34b4). I explore this sketchily presented Fast Argument. I consider why Aristotle may think it is valid and why he does not seem to realize that, on readings that make it eective against Platos view, his Fast Argument also seems to apply to his own view that eudaimonia is the chief good. This is what I will call Aristotles Dilemma. If the Fast Argument is interpreted too narrowly, its point about the whiteness of a white thing being independent of its duration will not apply to the goodness of the Form of the Good. If it is interpreted broadly enough to undermine the claim of the Form of the Good to be the chief good, it will equally undermine that claim for eudaimonia. Finally, I discuss some of the things Plato and Aristotle say about the chief good, and comparable things Immanuel Kant says about the good will. I draw some speculative conclusions that focus on the importance for Aristotle of the goodness of the chief good not being at risk. KEY WORDS: Aristotle, completeness, eternality, eudaimonia, immutability, Immanuel Kant, Plato, risk

The Journal of Ethics (2005) 9: 533549 DOI 10.1007/s10892-005-3526-9

Springer 2005

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1. INTRODUCTION The early-music historian Tom Kelley once explained how Joshua Rifkin argued that J. S. Bach wrote some of his large choral works for a small choir (Rifkins thesis is sometimes referred to as one voice per part1). The lower boundary is set by the fewest voices needed to sing all the parts as written, including solos and choruses singing simultaneous chords. For Bachs B Minor Mass that number is eight, assuming the soloists also sing the choral parts, one voice per part. The upper boundary is deduced from one assumption: that Bach was a musical genius and one corollary that a musical genius would not write performance instructions to achieve musical effects that an audience would not hear. But one nds such instructions in the score of the B Minor Mass, e.g., to change from very loud (triple forte) to softer but still pretty loud (double forte) in adjacent measures. From the fact that following such instructions would not be heard if attempted by a large choir, plus the assumption that Bach was a musical genius, it is concluded that Bach wrote the B Minor Mass for a vocal double quartet. In what follows, I will apply reasoning resembling this, in spirit at least, to Aristotle. I will focus on a puzzling, apparent anomaly that is surprising to nd in a philosophical genius like Aristotle, and I will look for something (analogous, mutates mutandes, to Rifkins minimal choir size) that will make everything come out right. The anomaly in question is that Aristotle appears to use an elegant short argument to attack Platos doctrine of the good, which argument equally appears to attack Aristotles own doctrine of the good. Consider these two questions. First: Why does Aristotle reverse the judgment of Socrates/Plato on the issue: Which is better things that are (only) good in themselves, or, things that are both good in themselves and good for their consequences? Second: Why does Aristotle attack Platos doctrine that the Form of the Good is the chief good, with an argument that appears to threaten his own view that eudaimonia is the chief good?
See Andrew Parrott, The Essential Bach Choir (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2000).
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I suspect there are connections between these questions, but that will come later. I will start with the second question rst.

2. ARISTOTLES FAST ARGUMENT About the argumentation in Aristotles ethics, W. F. R. Hardie says:
There are . . . considerable variations in the texture of the argument, in the degree of finish and elaboration with which the points are made. Some passages are highly condensed or sketchy. Here, for example, is a complete argument from the attack in Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics, I.6 on the Platonic doctrine of the good: but again it [the Form of the Good] will not be good any the more for being eternal, since that which lasts long is no whiter than that which perishes in a day.2

I will call this Aristotles Fast Argument. The context in which it occurs is this. Aristotle is preparing to examine other views about the chief good, as a preliminary to developing his own account. After discussing some popular candidates pleasure, wealth, and honor he says, Now some thought that apart from these many goods there is another which is good in itself and causes the goodness of all these as well (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1095a 2628).3 After apologizing for criticizing this view (held by friends of his), Aristotle deploys the Fast Argument as a clincher to cap o his refutation of Platos view that the Form of the Good is the chief good:
And one might ask the question, what in the world they mean by a thing itself, if in man himself and in a particular man the account of man is one and the same. For in so far as they are men, they will in no respect dier; and if this is so, neither will there be a dierence in so far as they are good. But again it will not be good any the more for being eternal, since that which lasts long is no whiter than that which perishes in a day (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1096 a34-b4).

Aristotle seems not to be concerned about whether the independence of the degree of whiteness of a white thing from its duration is even relevant to his claim about the independence of the degree of goodness of the Form of the Good from its eternality. Jeremy Benthams view about the goodness (and the degree of goodness) of pleasure and its duration suggests maybe he should be:
W. F. R. Hardie, Aristotles Ethical Theory, Second (Enlarged) Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 3. 3 All quotations from Jonathan Bames (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), emphasis provided.
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To a person considered by himself, the value of a pleasure or pain considered by itself, will be greater or less, according to the four following circumstances: 1. 2. 3. 4. Its Its Its Its intensity. duration. certainty or uncertainty. propinquity or remoteness.4

It is at least arguable, then, that the duration of some things (like, e.g., pleasure) is relevant to their goodness. So even if we grant that the duration of a white thing is not relevant to (the degree of) its whiteness, how does that show that the duration (and further, the eternality) of the Form of the Good is not relevant to (the degree of) its goodness? In what follows, I explore this sketchily presented Fast Argument. I consider why Aristotle may think it is valid and why he does not seem to realize that, on readings that make it effective against Platos view, his Fast Argument also seems to apply to his own view that eudaimonia is the chief good. This is what I will call Aristotles Dilemma:
If the Fast Argument is interpreted too narrowly, its point about the whiteness of a white thing being independent of its duration, will not apply to the goodness of the Form of the Good. If it is interpreted broadly enough to undermine the claim of the Form of the Good to be the chief good, it will equally undermine that claim for Eudaimonia.

Finally, I will discuss some of the things Plato and Aristotle say about the chief good, and comparable things Immanuel Kant says about the good will. I draw some speculative conclusions that focus on the importance for Aristotle of the goodness of the chief good not being at risk.

3. THE FORMS, SUPER PROPERTIES, AND PROPERTIES THAT ADMIT OF DEGREE It is well known that the Platonic Forms have striking properties. E.g., they are supposed to be immutable, eternal, and have/need no beginning, etc. I will call these Super Properties. Ordinary things come into being, grow, change, ourish, decline, nally pass away; not so the Forms. Their Super Properties prompt questions like this:
Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), Chapter IV, Section II.
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How do Super Properties interact with ordinary properties? For instance, some ordinary properties come in degrees, or, admit of more or less. Others act as intensier/enhancers or diminisher/ inhibitors of those that come in degrees. E.g., the slapstick humor of a situation may be greater in a setting that is sunny, energetic, and fast. It may be lesser in one that is dark, lethargic, and slow. So light and fast may enhance funniness, dark and slow may inhibit it. One way of framing a question raised by Aristotles Fast Argument is to ask whether Super Properties always enhance such ordinary features: whether, e.g., Eternality, because it is a Super Property, should be expected to make a white thing whiter, a good thing better, a heavy thing heavier, a funny thing funnier, and so forth? By pointing out that a white thing that lasts long is no whiter than one that perishes in a day, Aristotle may be arguing that Eternality is not always a degree-eligible feature-enhancer. Since he oers only the one counterexample, whiteness, he presumably thinks it attacks some universal claim. This might explain why he does not bother to anticipate an obvious rejoinder: that, while duration (and thus eternality) may not make a white thing whiter, it does make a good thing better. Along these lines, one can imagine Aristotelian Fast Arguments for other Super Properties. Consider, e.g., Immutability: But again it will not be good any the more for being Immutable, since that which cannot change is no whiter than that which can. Or consider, Not Having or Needing a Beginning: But again it will not be good any the more for not having or needing a beginning, since that which has/needs no beginning is no whiter than that which has/does (need a beginning). It looks as though, in order for Aristotles claim about whiteness to be relevant to his point about goodness, there needs to be more generality to the claim about duration and whiteness than appears on the surface. There are, of course, different ways in which duration might affect a degree-eligible property like whiteness. For instance: (1) An ordinary degree-eligible property may itself be directly linked in some way to duration. E.g., suppose a noise is annoying. Then the longer it lasts, the more annoying it becomes. Hence, the property of being annoying will be in some way directly linked to duration, even if duration does not have the general power of enhancing all properties that admit of degree. On this (direct linkage) reading, no fact about whether or not whiteness is linked to duration would necessarily bear on

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whether or not any other property (say, goodness) is so linked, unless whiteness itself is directly linked to that other property in some way. (2) At the other extreme, duration might have the general power of enhancing any ordinary property that admits of degrees. In this case it would have to enhance whiteness, since by hypothesis it enhances all degree-eligible properties. Not doing it for whiteness would prove it unable to do it for goodness, if the reason for thinking it could do it for goodness is that duration is supposed to have the general power to enhance all degreeeligible properties. Of these two extremes, Aristotles thinking appears to be closer to the latter. His Fast Argument, in other words, seems to be this. Eternality does not make the Form of the Good any better than it would otherwise be, because the only way it could do that is if Eternality enhances every degree-eligible property. But duration does not enhance whiteness, so Eternality (the limiting case of duration) does not enhance every degree-eligible property. Hence, Eternality does not enhance goodness. This version of the Fast Argument may indeed threaten Platos doctrine that the Form of the Good is the chief good (if it was held for this reason), but, in this broad version, it also seems to threaten Aristotles own views.

4. THE FAST ARGUMENT AND ARISTOTLES OWN ACCOUNT THE CHIEF GOOD

OF

Aristotles extended discussion of what is the highest of all goods achievable by action (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1095 a 16f.) is notorious for being dicult to render consistent, coherent, and plausible. Without attempting anything so ambitious, I want to consider whether some of the features that are prominent in his discussion, features that are important to his account of eudaimonia, are used in ways that render them vulnerable to his Fast Argument. Let us start with what he calls completeness. Here is how he introduces this notion:
Since there are evidently more than one end, and we choose some of these (e.g. wealth, flutes, and in general instruments) for the sake of something else, clearly not all ends are complete ends; but the chief good is evidently something complete.

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Therefore, if there is only one complete end, this will be what we are seeking, and if there are more than one, the most complete of these will be what we are seeking. Now we call that which is in itself worthy of pursuit more complete than that which is worthy of pursuit for the sake of something else, and that which is never desirable for the sake of something else more complete than the things that are desirable both in themselves and for the sake of that other thing, and therefore we call complete without qualification that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else. Now such a thing happiness, above all else, is held to be; for this we choose always for itself and never for the sake of something else, but honor, pleasure, reason, and every excellence we choose indeed for themselves (for if nothing resulted from them we should still choose each of them), but we choose them also for the sake of happiness, judging that through them we shall be happy. Happiness, on the other hand, no one chooses for the sake of these, nor, in general, for anything other than itself (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1097a25-b7).

Surprisingly, Aristotle reverses (without comment) the judgment of Plato/Socrates in the early part of Book II of the Republic. Aristotle declares that a thing that is both desirable for itself and also for its results is less complete (and hence less good) than a thing desirable only for itself and not (also) for its results. Most complete of all (complete without qualication) is that which is always desirable for itself and never for the sake of anything else. A proponent of the Fast Argument might have been expected to say that completeness does not directly imply goodness, and that hence, to be more complete is not necessarily to be better. Completeness, they might be expected to hold, though special (unusual, peculiar), does not necessarily make an end better. How could Socrates, of all people, have made such a crude blunder as to think it was a supreme recommendation of Justice to put it in a category that deemed it less good (namely, things that are desired both for their own sakes and for what they lead to), when a higher evaluative category (namely, things that are (only) desired for their own sakes) was right there in full view? Things get murkier as we turn to self-sufciency. Aristotle introduces this notion with these words.
From the point of view of self-sufficiency the same result seems to follow; for the complete good is thought to be self-sufficient. . . . The self-sufficient we now define as that which when isolated makes life desirable and lacking in nothing; and such we think happiness to be; and further we think it most desirable of all things, without being counted as one good thing among others - if it were so counted it would clearly be made more desirable by the addition of even the least of goods; for that which is added becomes an excess of goods, and of goods the greater is always more desirable. Happiness, then, is something complete and self-sufficient, and is the end of action. . . (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1097b8,9,1522)

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Regarding self-sufciency, does being self-sufcient unusual and special though that may be necessarily make something better than it otherwise would be? Or does an Aristotelian Fast Argument apply here too? The part of Aristotles denition The self-sufcient we now dene as that which when isolated makes life desirable and lacking in nothing the part that concerns a things doing something when isolated, seems to bear, not in the rst instance on a things value, but on its metaphysical status. Suppose B and C both would make life more desirable, but that C would do so when isolated but B not. They both either make it more desirable or they do not. If they do, they deserve whatever credit derives from doing that. If they do not, they do not. There may be some notion of risk at work here. They both do it suppose: to the exact same degree but C does it with less risk, with more safety, security, and reliability. I will return to the notion of risky versus riskless things (goods), but for the moment, compare whiteness again. Would there not be an Aristotelian Fast Argument to this eect: a (white) thing that is less risky is no whiter thereby than one that is more risky? Or this: a (white) thing whose whiteness depends only on itself, is no whiter thereby than one whose whiteness is not thus independent of other things? Skipping over the idea of somethings lacking in nothing, consider the remaining elements of Aristotles discussion of self-sufciency, viz., Further, we think it [eudaimonia] most desirable of all things, without being counted as one good thing among others . . .5 The point is, apparently, that if it were counted as one good thing among others, then it would be possible to add some other good thing to it and the resultant whole would be better. Consequently, eudaimonia would not be most desirable of all things, at least in comparison to that augmented whole. Here
5

In a later discussion of the view that pleasure is the good, Aristotle says,

[Eudoxus] argued that pleasure when added to any good, e.g., to just or temperate action, makes it more worthy of choice, and that it is only by itself that the good can be increased. This argument seems to show it to be one of the goods, and no more a good than any other; for every good is more worthy of choice along with another good than taken alone. And so it is by an argument of this kind that Plato proves the good not to be pleasure; he argues that the pleasant life is more desirable with wisdom than without, and that if the mixture is better, pleasure is not the good; for the good cannot become more desirable by the addition of anything to it. (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1172b23)

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again the question is, would a thing be better, for being thus unimprovable? It may be tempting to think that if a thing is un-improvable, that can only be because it is already at the top of all tops, so to speak. But why could not something that is not at the very top, for instance, something that was seventh best, why could that not also be un-improvable? E.g., suppose a thing is seventh best, and yet nothing could be added that would increase its resultant value. Perhaps it is a black hole with respect to adding other good things. Then the fact that this seventh best thing was un-improvable would not necessarily make it any better (make it sixth, say) than it otherwise would be. Before turning to Kant, let us review the bidding. For whatever reason, when criticizing Plato, Aristotle does not consider the possibility of a direct link between a things being Eternal and its being better (Such a link would permit Eternality to enhance value, but would not require that duration enhance whiteness, absent its own direct link). In order to extract a point relevant to goodness from his claim about the independence of whiteness from duration, his Fast Argument seems to require that Super Properties be general feature enhancers. Otherwise a point about whiteness being independent of duration need not bear on whether goodness is similarly independent. The puzzle is why Aristotle did not realize that his own Special Features - e.g., Completeness and Self-Suciency - were in the same boat, equally vulnerable (without an established direct linkage to goodness) to his Fast Argument? Surely, one would think, the inventor of the Fast Argument should have noticed the following extended applications. A white thing is no whiter for: not depending on anything else, or for not being at risk of darkening, or for being unable to turn black.

5. KANT: WHAT IS SO SPECIAL

ABOUT THE

GOOD WILL?

Kants famous discussion of the Good Will,6 regarding what is required for something to be good-without-qualication, implies
Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Lewis White Beck (trans), in Robert Paul Wol (ed.), Kant: Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, with Critical Essays (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1969), pp. 11 13.
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value-enhancing assumptions that may be philosophical descendents of Plato and Aristotles assumptions about their own Super Properties. Kants assumptions appear to be equally vulnerable to Aristotles Fast Argument. In his extravagant commendation of the Good Will, Kant disparagingly damns with apparently strong (but really faint) praise, a traditional list of goods (intelligence, wit, judgment, and whatever talents of the mind one might want to name) that are doubtless in many respects good and desirable. Even that guarded praise he goes on to qualify, saying that those very things can also become extremely bad and harmful if the will which is to make use of [them] . . . is not good.7 Likewise for other traditional candidates for the chief good, which he calls gifts of fortune, like power, riches, honor, even health, and that complete well-being and contentment with ones condition which is called happiness. These, though no doubt praiseworthy in their way, can make for pride and often hereby even arrogance, unless there is a good will to correct their inuence on the mind . . .8 Kant concludes,
Moderation in emotions and passion, self-control, and calm deliberation are not only good in many respects but even seem to constitute part of the intrinsic worth of a person. But they are far from being rightly called good without qualification (however unconditionally they were commended by the ancients). For without the principles of a good will, they can become extremely bad; the very coolness of a villain makes him not only much more dangerous but also immediately more abominable in our eyes than he would have been regarded by us without it.9

We are given to understand that the good will, by contrast with all these other candidates for the chief good, cannot become extremely bad and harmful; cannot make for pride and often hereby even arrogance; cannot become extremely bad under certain conditions. This is why on Kants view the good will can be rightly called good without qualication. (Also, there is the additional suggestion that with these other candidates for the chief good, their goodness depends on a good wills preventing their turning bad. This may be a descendent of Aristotles claims about completeness.) With all other candidates for the chief good, Kant implies, however good they are, there is always (in contrast to the good will) a risk of contamination: they might turn bad, develop bad consequences, become tainted in some way, become extremely harmful. But these special
7 8 9

Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, p.11. Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, p.11. Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, p.12.

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inabilities cannot turn into its opposite; cannot have opposite consequences - these inabilities are Kants version of Super Properties. They are certainly unusual, special, perhaps unique. But do they make a thing better than it would otherwise be? They do testify, in their own way, to somethings being risk-free. Good things that have these special properties are not at risk of losing their goodness; not only are they good, but they cannot lose their goodness, under any circumstances no matter what. But here too, Aristotles Fast Argument threatens. A white thing is no whiter for being unable to lose its whiteness, or to turn black; nor is it whiter for being unable to produce dark results. Now perhaps this notion of risklessness which I suspect is also at the heart of what Plato and Aristotle are trying to capture with their concepts of self-suciency and completeness perhaps risklessness has some direct, value-enhancing, links to goodness that it lacks to whiteness. But if so, we are owed more argument than either Plato, Aristotle, or Kant oers. 6. RISK, THEN
AND

NOW

Bertrand Russell somewhere10 speculates that our need for a concept of a stable, non-ephemeral object may be contingent upon such matters as the distance from the earth to the sun. Given relevant such facts, the temperature near the earths surface is moderate enough to permit stable, non-ephemeral objects to exist. If we happened to live (assuming we could) much closer to the sun, all would be ery ux. There would be no thing-like solidities in our experience, and hence, no need for the concept of an object. It is tempting to engage in comparable speculations11 about prices and values in the ancient world. Early, primitive economies may have had persistent price-stability. Not driven by the need to adjust to rapid technological innovations, or to rapid changes in consumer preferences, it may have seemed that things cost what they always have. This may have been the origin of the notion of things having a just price. What started as a usual or customary price, may have become over
I believe this was Bertrand Russells speculation, but have not been able to document it. 11 I should emphasize that what follows is totally a priori speculation. I have no idea whether the relevant economic-historical facts are even known, much less whether they would support these speculations.
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time what things always have and always will cost. This eventually may have come to be thought of as what they should cost.12 Ideals, to continue in this speculative vein, may help make sense of the raw experiences of buying and selling, trading and bartering; the blooming, buzzing, confusion of the marketplace in which buyers and sellers haggle to establish what things are worth. Appeals to what a thing cost last time it was purchased, what it cost your father, and his father, etc., may have been informed by an ideal of pricestability, or, in the abstract, of changelessness. This ideal of immutability (changelessness, stability) might have emerged in response to an illusion (a singularity) about prices. The experience may have been that prices tended to be stable. The sense in which this was illusory was that this (apparently enduring) stability was due to contingent facts about early, primitive economies. The underlying theoretical reality was quite different: continual, unseen-hand, incremental market-price adjustments to various factors (like technological innovation, changes in consumer preferences, etc.) that could (but, accidentally, for a long time, did not) change. Changelessness was the limit, as it were, of the comfort, ease, and familiarity of the customary and the usual. Analogous to the point about our distance from the sun, one might speculate that in a variably inationary economy, where (in the extreme) prices change overnight and nothing costs the same relative to other things, the concept of a Just Price would not have emerged, nor would there have developed an ideal of changelessness. In such an inationary environment, a comparable ideal might be contraPolonius: Both a borrower and a lender be. The trick in such an environment would be to engage in carefully balanced borrowing and lending, so that what ination takes away on the curves it gives back on the straightaways. Instead of changelessness, one might expect the emergence of an ideal of effortless, automatic, balancing adjustments to perpetual change a complex kind of indexing, in effect. I am speculating about why some early thinkers may simply overvalue stability: why they may not appreciate that insurance itself has a cost. There is such a thing, after all, as buying too much insurance. If you start with an end-attainment condence level of, say, two-thirds, you can, if you are willing to pay enough, increase that
Henry Sidgwick speaks of one element of our intuitive notion of justice consisting in the fulllment of expectations arising out of the established order of society [see Henry Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, Seventh Edition, Book III, Chapter V, Section 2 (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1966), pp. 271272].
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to three-quarters, but it will likely be expensive. You might even, at great cost, increase it to 90% through a variety of purchases of precautionary, o-setting investments, and even more insurance. Legend has it that the nal three percent costs more than all the rest put together. So it will probably be irrational to fantasize about 100% assurance. Even if attainable, it would be ruinously expensive. Why, then, did early thinkers appear to think of risk in a vacuum, as it were, completely detached from any notion of costs and benets? My speculation is that this may have been due to a kind of valueprice-experience illusion. The experience was of long-term price stability. This may have led to concepts like the Just Price, and to ideals of changelessness and assumptions of cost-free risklessness. The reality was that this experience may have been a singularity, a contingent artifact of a primitive economy. Perhaps if early thinkers had experienced, instead, extended periods of rapid price changes, value/price stability would have come to seem unusual, a departure from the norm. But if for long, long periods, nothing much ever does change, stability comes to seem the norm. Stability, security, reliability all seem to be so normal, prevalent, and easy, as to seem costless. Against that (conceptual) background, it may have seemed obvious to Plato that changelessness was an ideal, the way things really ought to be. Aristotle, while rejecting a good deal of Platos metaphysics, may not have been immune to the underlying temptations that generated this part of it. Once Plato and Aristotle put these notions into play, Kant may have caught it from them.

7. CONCLUSION Returning to the two questions from which we started First, why does Aristotle reverse the judgment of Socrates and Plato about what is the highest category of goods? My answer is that he thought that things that are (only) good in themselves outrank things that are both good in themselves and good for their consequences, because Aristotle, more systematically than Plato, builds internality13 (and hence risklessness) directly into his notion of what makes things better:
This term features in G. E. Moores attempt in G. E. Moore, Philosophical Studies (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1927), pp. 260261, to explain what he had earlier [in G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903)] meant by a non-natural property.
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But now what is this internality of which I have been speaking? . . . We can, in fact, set up the following definition. To say that a kind of value is intrinsic means merely that the question whether a thing possesses it, and in what degree it possesses it, depends solely on the intrinsic nature of the thing in question. . . . When I say, with regard to any particular kind of value, that the question whether and in what degree anything possesses it depends solely on the intrinsic nature of the thing in question, I mean to say two dierent things at the same time. I mean to say (1) that it is impossible for what is strictly one and the same thing to possess that kind of value at one time, or in one set of circumstances, and not to possess it at another; and equally impossible for it to possess it in one degree at one time, or in one set of circumstances, and to possess it in a dierent degree at another, or in a dierent set. . . . (2) The second part of what is meant is that if a given thing possesses any kind of intrinsic value in a certain degree, then not only must that same thing possess it, under all circumstances, in the same degree, but also anything exactly like it, must, under all circumstances, possess it in exactly the same degree.14

The goodness of things whose (total?) goodness depends only on themselves is not at risk as compared with the goodness of things whose (total?) goodness depends partly on external factors. The former cannot worsen, or have their value diminished, without themselves changing. The latter can. Not being in this way as much at risk directly makes them better. Second, Why does Aristotle attack Plato with an argument that appears to threaten his own view? My answer here is that Aristotle has, largely, but maybe not completely, come to think that internality (and hence risklessness) is a key factor, and that it is directly related to betterness, not indirectly via some all-purpose, feature-enhancing power of the Forms deriving from their Super Properties. Completeness and self-suciency are aspects of internality, which ensure risklessness, he may have thought. This aects goodness directly in ways, one must suppose he thought, that duration or eternality do not. Why he thought self-suciency and completeness bear directly on a things goodness (and the degree thereof), but eternality and duration do not, remains a question. In the story of Tithonus, his wife Eos (the dawn) persuades the gods to grant him immortality, but neglects to ask for eternal youth. Hence, while Tithonus cannot die, he does age and deteriorate. This may suggest that the Greeks realized that mere duration cannot prevent a good thing from getting worse. And, they may have thought, if it cannot prevent value-diminishment in a good thing, it stands to reason it cannot create or initiate value in a neutral thing,
14

Moore, Philosophical Studies, pp. 260261.

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nor enhance or improve the value of an already good thing:15 Since reason alone can never produce any action, or give rise to volition, I infer, that the same faculty is as incapable of preventing volition, or of disputing the preference with any passion or emotion.16 Such inferences are chancy though. The United States Congress can initiate legislation, but does not have the veto. A person cannot initiate, but can inhibit, a sneeze, etc. This could (partly) explain why Aristotle thought completeness and self-sufciency contribute directly to the value of things. They contribute to risklessness, and defeat the possibility of valuediminishment due to (other) things changing and thus the whole situation turning out worse. Perhaps Aristotle thought that considerations illustrated by the Tithonus case show that duration by itself does not defeat the possibility of value-diminishment due to time passing. But he may have thought that having its value selfcontained, and, to use G. E. Moores terminology internal, and hence not at risk of diminishing for any external reason, was an important value-preserving feature. This might bear on why he treats completeness and self-suciency so dierently from duration and eternality in his Fast Argument. In this neighborhood one may begin to hear a small choir singing a Bach chorus. APPENDIX A. ALL INCLUSIVE GOODS The hypothesized value-stability illusion, which may or may not have its source in the economic innocence (or, good luck) of early, primitive economies not regularly experiencing volatile ination this illusion may be related to a tendency in some of Aristotles discussions to frame value issues in static rather than dynamic terms. (Of course, it sounds weird to say that.) Consider again, for instance, his remarks about self-sufciency:
We think it [eudaimonia] most desirable of all things, without being counted as one good thing among others - if it were so counted it would clearly be made more desirable by the addition of even the least of goods; for that which is added becomes an excess of goods, and of goods the greater is always more desirable. (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1097b17)

I owe this point to Nathan Greenberg. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, L. A. Selby-Bigge (ed.), Second Edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), Book II, Part III, Section III, pp. 414415.
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One interpretation, favored by J. L. Ackrill, of what Aristotle may have meant by this, appeals to the notion of eudaimonia being an all inclusive good, something that contains or includes all other good things.17 The reasoning is this. The best/only way to make sense of the claim that no good thing can be added to happiness that will make it better, is if happiness (already) includes all intrinsically good things (And, presumably, includes them in the right amount). So the addition of more, say, sweet things, supposing sweet things to be good, would not make happiness any better, because it would already include (the right amount of) sweet things, and so likewise for all other goods. This notion of the possibility of somethings including a totality of All Good Things appears to be a snapshot, an instantaneous time-slice, a notion that belongs to statics rather than dynamics. It is not clear how such a notion could handle the discovery/ invention of completely new good things. Remember, we are considering the possibility of adding even the least of goods. Recall, for example, that before 1950 no life, no matter how otherwise happy, included any experience of playing video or computer games, activities now considered important to the
J. L. Ackrill, Aristotle on Eudaimonia, in Nancy Sherman (ed.), Aristotles Ethics: Critical Essays (Lanham: Rowman and Littleeld Publishers, 1999), p. 64. [Aristotle] is saying, then, that eudaimonia, being absolutely nal and genuinely selfsucient, is more desirable than anything else, in that it includes everything desirable in itself. It is best, and better than everything else, not in the way that bacon is better then eggs and than tomatoes (and therefore the best of the three to choose), but in the way that bacon, eggs, and tomatoes is a better breakfast than either bacon or eggs or tomatoes and is indeed the best breakfast without qualication. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this emphatic part of chapter 7 in connection with Aristotles elucidation of the concept of eudaimonia. He is not here running over rival popular views about what is desirable; nor is he yet working out his own account of the best life. He is explaining the logical force of the word eudaimonia and its relation to terms like end and good. This is all a matter of report and analysis, containing nothing capable of provoking moral or practical dispute. Aristotles two points are: (i) you cannot say of eudaimonia that you seek it for the sake of anything else, whereas you can say of anything else that you seek it for the sake of eudaimonia; (ii) you cannot say you would prefer eudaimonia plus something extra to eudaimonia. These points are of course connected. For if you could say that you would prefer eudaimonia plus something extra to eudaimonia, you could say that you sought eudaimonia for the sake of something else: namely, the greater end consisting of eudaimonia plus something extra. The rst point is that eudaimonia is inclusive of all intrinsic goods; and if that is so by denition, it is unintelligible to suggest that eudaimonia might be improved by addition. [Some may recall an old television advertisement in which Ricardo Montalban intones: Chrysler oers one feature that all other cars lack: Everything! AFM.]
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happiness of not a few young rational animals. Were no people happy prior to 1950? Were our ancestors less happy than we thought? From this perspective, their lives lacked something. Or shall we index happiness to dates and times, so that we can speak only of happiness (1968) and happiness (1926), and, presumably, not be able to compare happinesses from different times? Is there an extension, along a new dimension, of Aristotle and Solons question, Must no one at all, then, be called happy while he lives; must we, as Solon says, see the end? (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1100a10). Must we wait until all innovation, all invention, all discovery of new good things has come to an end? I am not condent I see how to resolve these puzzles, but I suspect we have here, again, the long shadow of Platos fascination with the risk-free, the changeless. Department of Philosophy Oberlin College Oberlin, OH 44074 USA E-mail: al.mackay@oberlin.edu