Aristotle for Everybody by Mortimer J. Adler

Author:Mortimer J. Adler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 2017-12-12T05:00:00+00:00

13

Good Habits and Good Luck

Some of the real goods that are required for a good life are means to others. External goods, such as food, clothing, and shelter, are means to health, vitality, and vigor. We need wealth to live well because we need health to live well.

Similarly, we need health, vitality, and vigor in order to engage in activities that are necessary to obtain still other goods. If we did not have to do anything at all in order to live well, we would not need vitality and vigor in order to be active.

In the order of goods, the highest ranking belongs to those that we desire for their own sake as well as for the sake of a good life. Wealth, for example, is not desirable for its own sake, but only as a means to living well. But such real goods as friendship and knowledge are desirable for their own sake as well as for the sake of a good life.

Some real goods are limited goods; others are unlimited goods. For example, wealth and bodily pleasure are limited goods. You can want more of them than you need, and more than you need is not really good for you. Knowledge, skill, and the pleasures of the mind are unlimited goods. More of them is always better. They are goods of which you cannot have too much.

If there were no limited goods of which you could want more than you need; if all real goods were equally important, so that none of them should be sought for the sake of any other; if wanting certain things that appear good to you did not come into conflict with seeking other things that are really good for you—if life could be lived this way, then there would be little or no difficulty about living a good life, and there would be no need for good habits of choice and decision in order to succeed in one’s pursuit of happiness.

But that, Aristotle knew, is not the way it is. If you think about your own life for a moment, you will see that he was right. Just think about the regrets you have had. Remember the times you were sorry because you were too lazy to take the trouble to do what was necessary to get something you needed. Or remember when you allowed yourself the pleasure of oversleeping or overeating and regretted it later. Or the time when you did not do something you ought to have done because you feared the pain you might suffer in doing it.

If you had made the right choice and decision every one of those times, you would have no regrets. Choices and decisions that leave you with no regrets are choices and decisions that contribute to your pursuit of happiness by putting real goods in the right order, by limiting the amount when it should be limited, and by putting aside things you want if they get in the way of obtaining things you need.

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