A Monistic Conclusion to Aristotle’s Ergon Argument: the Human Good as the Best Achievement of a Human

Abstract

Abstract Scholars have often thought that a monistic reading of Aristotle’s definition of the human good – in particular, one on which “best and most teleios virtue” (Nicomachean Ethics I 7, 1098a17–18) refers to theoretical wisdom – cannot follow from the premises of the ergon argument. I explain how a monistic reading can follow from the premises, and I argue that this interpretation gives the correct rationale for Aristotle’s definition. I then explain that even though the best and most teleios virtue must be a single virtue, that virtue could in principle be a whole virtue that arises from the combination of all the others (and this is what kalokagathia seems to be in the Eudemian Ethics). I also clarify that the definition of the human good aims at capturing the nature of human eudaimonia only in its primary case.