Abstract

The central thesis of the project is that commentators have misunderstood what Aristotle means by the best human life. A common tendency among scholars is to treat the best life as a comprehensive collection of intrinsic goods and to sidestep the issue of how these goods are ranked or organized. To counter this tendency I try to situate Aristotle's ethics between two principles, plurality and hierarchy. On the one hand, Aristotle recognizes the plurality of goods the best life possesses , but on the other hand he also believes that these goods can be ranked hierarchically. By drawing on the model of Aristotle's teleology I show how Aristotle is able to combine plurality and hierarchy: each species of living thing aims at a goal which cannot be explained by, or defined in terms of, the goals of other living things; at the same time Aristotle also believes that some living things are superior to others. The same combination of principles characterizes the goods contained in the good life: Aristotle can claim both that goods have their own autonomously defined value and that some of these goods are superior to others. If my argument is correct, it suggests that Aristotle is a pluralist without being a relativist