To prepare for the main lecture, you should work on the Aristotle reading, at least enough to answer the following questions. Write out brief answers to these, to hand in at the main lecture. I'll be there to pick them up from you.
But, first, some guidance about the reading:
In section 1, Aristotle says that every art, inquiry, action, and pursuit aims at some "good". He means to be talking about the purpose or goal of each of these things. It doesn't matter whether the purpose or goal is genuinely good. He calls the purpose or goal of something "good" because achievement of the purpose or goal means that the art, inquiry, action, or pursuit was successful, or worked well. So, for example, a bank robber is engaged in a pursuit that aims at stealing money from a bank and getting away with it. The "good" at which the robber aims is to get the money and get away. If the robber achieves this, through careful planning and execution of the plan, we might characterize the robber as skilled at what he or she does. He or she is "good at" robbing banks. Another word for goal or purpose is "end". So, the "good" at which an activity aims is also known as its "end".
The reason Aristotle brings all this up, though, is that he is interested in figuring out whether there is some "good" -- that is, some goal or purpose -- for all of a human's life. No matter who you are. That is, do all human beings share some one overall goal or purpose? In Section 2, he notes that "politics" seems to be a name for the most general study of life. Don't be misled. He's not using the word narrowly. He's talking about the general study of how people's lives ought to be organized, both as individuals and as members of a society. So, the real question of "politics" is What is the goal of life? Can we find a goal that everyone would acknowledge as their goal?
In section 3 he warns us that we may not get a precise answer, but that doesn't mean we can't get a useful answer.
In section 5, Aristotle gives us a list of some common answers that people give when asked what their goal in life is. He rejects each of these answers, for various reasons, not because he disapproves of these goals, but because he thinks they can be shown not to be the ultimate goal that people have. In other words, when people say their goal is X, they might not be correct. Remember, Aristotle is looking for an ultimate goal--something that people want for its own sake and not for the sake of something else that they also want. For example, if someone were to say their goal in life was to be sexy, Aristotle would ask that person why they wanted to be sexy. If they said they wanted to be sexy in order to be admired, or in order to attract attention, or some such thing, Aristotle would point out that their desire to be sexy was not really their ultimate goal, for they wanted to be sexy in order to achieve some further goal.
Please skip section 6 for now.
Section 7 is the key to Aristotle's answer to the question. Here we find what he thinks people really all want--what is the goal of human life. But then it turns out that people disagree about the details, and on the second column of page 12 he launches into an exploration of the "function of man" in order to get clearer about the details. The idea here is that there is an excellent way of being human, and if we could figure out what it is to live excellently as a human being, we would know the details of our goal better. See what you can make of this talk of living excellently. Aristotle uses the word "virtuous" to refer to excellence. This can be confusing, because you may think of "virtue" as having something to do with being morally pure. That is not the meaning of the word here. Instead, think of the way the word "virtue" is used when someone says "What is the virtue of that plan?" When it is used in that way, it means "excellence". The virtue of a plan is what makes the plan a good plan. The virtue of a life is what makes the life an excellently lived life.
Questions to write about
1. Make a list of the common answers that people give when they say what they think the ultimate goal of life is, as found in Section 5.
2. For two of these answers, explain in your own words why Aristotle does not think they are good answers.
3. What is Aristotle's own answer to the question of the ultimate goal that everyone has for their own life? (In Section 7)
4. What life function or activity does Aristotle identify as distinctively human in Section 7?
5. Why does Aristotle think that knowing a distinctive human function will tell us something important about what an excellent life is like?