A Good in Itself

Listened to the first book of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics while running down the frontage road of one of the many canals that run through the Valley. In the first book, Aristotle distinguishes between those things that are "good in themselves" and those things that lead to another good, and in turn another good, until you reach end good, the good in itself because it doesn't lead on to another. (Example: cooking is good because it makes food palatable; food is good because it makes us healthy; health is good because it gives us long life; long life is good because wisdom takes years to acquire; and so on.) All these are good. But the chief end of all of them is wisdom. Though, admittedly, Aristotle was less interested in wisdom as an end in itself than Plato/Socrates. For Aristotle, wisdom was worth little if it didn't lead to action. "To virtue," he writes, "belong virtuous activity."  

Most of us who start running, particularly those of us who start late life as I have, start running as a good that leads to other goods--we are interested in improving our health, loosing weight, living a longer life.

When I started running I was looking for an alternative to yoga--which I practiced for all the reasons above. I had been doing yoga for years. Then, I hurt my back; not while doing yoga, not while straining my muscles in any way. One day I simply got up from a chair and felt a twinge just to the left of my backbone. That twinge quickly turned into intense pain. I stopped doing yoga until the pain disappeared. But every time I started back up, particularly when doing any of the poses that required me to twist at the waist. So, I started running, even though several friends told me with confidence that my back would hurt from this as well. 

After a while, I found that I no longer ran for health or weight loss or longer life. I ran to run. It had become an end in itself. I'm still grateful I receive those external benefits from running. But that's not why I run anymore.

Oh, I know that some might claim that running is not the good in itself I claim it is. They might tell me with the same confidence that my friends insisted that I'd still have back pain, that I run for the endorphins. Those are the end, those feel good natural drugs, not the running.

Aristotle seems to have been similarly scoffed at when he claimed that the chief end was happiness. He clearly realized that a simple definition of good as happiness itself created problems, admitting that "To say that happiness is the chief good seems a platitude." He added that "a clearer account of what it is still desired. This might perhaps be given, if we could first ascertain the function of man." He then attempts to identify the function of man. I admit to being insufficient to that task.

Do this, however: Drive down any neighborhood in middle class America on the day the Good Will is collecting and count the number of exercise bikes and treadmills are on the curb. Not a scientific sampling. Nevertheless, I'm convinced that those who start running, or any other sport, or get a gym membership, soon give it up unless it becomes an end in itself.