First, if I aim at something, try to bring about some state...

First, if I aim at something, try to bring about some state of affairs, that I so aim is certainly not sufficient to justify my calling whatever I aim at good; but if I call what I aim at good, I shall be indicating that what I seek is what is sought in general by people who want what I want.

If I call what I am trying to get good-a good cricket bat or a good holiday, for example-by using the word good, I invoke the criteria characteristically accepted as a standard by those who want cricket bats or holidays. That this is genuinely so is brought out by a second point: to call something good and to allow that it is not a thing which anyone who wanted that sort of thing would want would be to speak unintelligibly. In this good differs from red.

That people in general want or do not want red objects is a contingent matter of fact; that people in general want what is good is a matter of the internal relationship of the concept of being good and being an object of desire.

Or to make the same point in a third way: if we were trying to learn the language of a strange tribe, and a linguist asserted of one of their words that it was to be translated by good, but this word was never applied to what they sought or pursued, although its use was always accompanied, say, by smiles, we should know a priori that the linguist was mistaken.

“If, then, there is some one goal among those which we pursue in our actions, which we desire for its own sake, and if we desire other things for its sake, and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else-in that case we should proceed to choose ad infinitum, so that all desire would be empty and futile -it is plain that this would be the good and the best of goods.”17 Aristotle’s definition of the supreme good leaves it open for the moment whether there is or is not such a good.

Some medieval scholastic commentators, doubtless with an eye to theological implications, rewrote Aristotle as if he had written that everything is chosen for the sake of some good, and that therefore there is (one) good for the sake of which everything is chosen. But this fallacious inference is not in Aristotle.

Aristotle’s procedure is to inquire whether anything does in fact answer to his description of a possible supreme good, and his method is to examine a number of opinions which have been held on the topic. Before he does this, however, he issues two warnings.