The goal of human life 75

We have already looked at the basic reasoning of the Function

Argument: the function or ‘‘work’’ of a thing (ergon) is that for the
sake of which it exists; therefore, the achieving of this work, or, more
precisely, its doing so well, is its good; but only a good thing of a kind
achieves its function well; and it is through its having the relevant
virtues that something is a good thing of its kind; thus, we can see
what the good of a thing is, if we look at what that kind of thing can
achieve only insofar as it has those virtues that make it a good thing of
its kind. In particular, we can see what the human good is, if we look
at what a human being can do only through having those traits that
make someone a good human being. A virtue is a trait that makes a
thing of a certain kind good and in view of which we call a thing of
that kind ‘‘good.’’ Thus, the Function Argument directs us to exam-
ine the various virtues and the sorts of actions that are distinctive of
them. But let us now look at the argument in more detail and
consider especially how Aristotle might respond to some standard
objections to it.
Aristotle does not take seriously the possibility that human beings
do not have a function. After all, he takes nature generally to act for
the sake of goals; indeed, he thinks that changeable things would have
no reason to change in one way rather than another, except to achieve
some goal; and he considers that human beings, as being placed in
some sense at the summit of the changeable world, would especially
act in order to achieve some goal. Nonetheless, he does give two very
compressed arguments for the premise:

[i] Or do you suppose that the carpenter, or the shoemaker, has some definite
work or action to perform, but that the human doesn’t, and, rather, he’s by
nature unemployed? [ii] Don’t you think that, just as there plainly is some
definite work to be done by the eye, the hand, the foot, and, generally, by
each of the parts of a human being, likewise, beyond all these, there is some
definite work to be done by a human being? (1097b28–33)

It is not clear what Aristotle’s argument is in (i). He could simply be

drawing attention to the names, ‘‘carpenter,’’ ‘‘shoemaker,’’ ‘‘human,’’
and arguing that we would not have a name for this distinct kind,
human, if either it did nothing distinctively or what it did was
indistinguishable from what other things did. One might object
that we can fashion a name for a kind of thing simply through