 So as I said in earlier videos, or I said in class anyway, that Aristotle's ethics is going to rely heavily upon his metaphysics. He thinks the answer to, I'm sorry, what ethics is trying to do is trying to answer the question, how are you to live your life? And your answers are going to have certain metaphysical presuppositions. For Aristotle, how you are to live your life is going to be, answering that question is going to be heavily influenced by the question of what is or what does it mean to exist. So everything we talked about when we were dealing with substance, trying to deal with that, you know, even dealing with the four causes, trying to explain change, that's going to have a lot to do with answering the question, how are you to live your life? One thing that Aristotle is going to talk about real quick and what's really important in this idea is the idea of an end, okay? And you know, the end is basically the goal or the purpose of a thing. So lots of things have what are called instrumental ends, right? And these are ends that are good for something else, okay? So for instance, you know, my smartphone, my phone is instrumental, has lots of instrumental ends for it, right? I can talk on this phone, I can receive email on this phone, I can know where I can locate myself on a map with this phone. So this phone has lots of instrumental ends, it's good for many other things, okay? Lots of things are like this, you know, my keys, right? My keys are good for opening up my car door. What my keys are not good for is say fertilizer for these trees, it makes really bad fertilizer for these trees. So does my phone, my phone makes really bad fertilizer for these trees. However, if I wanted to take a picture of these trees, my phone would be good for taking pictures of these trees. This is the idea behind having end is what is it good for, right? And an instrumental end is that it's good for something else. So we have things that are good for something else, this is, you know, has an instrumental end, right? Well now ask yourself, can there always, I mean there's always going to be an instrumental end. Is it always going to be the case that if something is good, then it's always good for something else, right? Well, think about that. You know, I have my smartphone and it's good for, for instance, communication, either by talking or by texting or by email, right? So it's good for something else. I'm going to say, okay, well is communication good for something else? I was like, yeah, you know, communication is good for something else, you know. We get to express propositions, right? So we get to communicate information. We also get to communicate, for instance, emotions, let each other know how we're feeling. This helps build relationships. Okay. Is, you know, communicating information, is that good for something else? And I said, well yeah, communication is good for a further, you know, communication of information is good for understanding the world and being able to compare ideas. So keep pushing it. Is it always just good for something else? Is that always just good for something else? Well, it looks like really quickly that if something is always just good for something else, then the question is whether there's anything good to begin with. If it's only ever just good for something else, why is all of this good anyway? It looks like when we're dealing with ends that there's going to be good, there's going to be something good that's good for its own sake, right? So when you ask the question, well, what is this good for? The reply is, well, that's good for this. And this is what's called an intrinsic end. It's good for its own sake. So for instance, you know, we're talking about communication. We tend to think of knowledge as something that's good for its own sake. Well, what is knowledge good for? Well, it's good because it's knowledge. Happiness. What is happiness good for? Well, it's good because it's happiness. Pleasure. What is pleasure good for? Well, it's good because it's pleasure, right? You keep asking, well, what is it, you know, is it just always is it good for something else? It looks like there's nothing that's ever going to be good to begin with. So we have this distinction between two kinds of ends. We have instrumental ends and we have intrinsic ends. And instrumental ends are ends that are good for the sake of something else. And intrinsic ends are good for its own sake. So this brings us to kind of the point of ethics, right? The question that ethics is trying to answer is how are you to live your life? And the answer that comes up really common, not across philosophers, but across a variety of different views in time and, sorry, across history and across place is happiness, right? We are seeking happiness. This is the thing that matters. So happiness, whatever it is, is an intrinsic end. Happiness is, what is it good for? Well, it's good for happiness. It's just something that you, it's just something that you want for its own sake. So the question then is, what is this intrinsic end that is happiness? You know, several different views have been offered. It was trying to account for what happiness is. So it's, you know, it's not exactly a settled question. But the idea is that, well, whatever happiness is, it's an intrinsic end. So the question that we have now is, well, how do we find the intrinsic end? So the question is, how are we going to find this end, this intrinsic end for us that is happiness? Well, to start answering this question, we have to first start answering, well, what are we? So Aristotle, kind of following Plato here, thinks that there's three parts to what a person is. All right? There's three parts to what a person is. And I notice this means, you know, answering the question, what is our form, right? If we're asking what are we, what kind of thing are we? If we're asking what is our form? So we already got the formal cause loaded in. All right? Well, for us, Aristotle says, we've got a rational part that's our mind, and we've got irrational parts, all right? Now irrational here does not mean something like, you know, just completely contrary to reason. That's not exactly what is meant by irrational. More along the lines of, it's like there's a part of us that doesn't use reason at all. Not that it's contrary to reason, it just doesn't use reason at all. And there's two irrational parts to us. One is, you know, he looks at what's called the vegetative part, right? So this doesn't mean we're vegetables. Now again, Aristotle is a pretty natural born biologist, so he starts with looking at how things are in common and then how they're different. And there's something that I have in common with all of these things, all right? All these trees, plant life. And that is that we grow, we take nutrition, and we live, right? We grow, we take nutrition, and we live. That's the vegetative part of the soul. Just the basic, you know, the basic survival functions of what you are. Now vegetables are a lot different from other kinds of things on the planet, right? And this is, you know, something that we have in common with animals that plants don't have in common with animals. And this is called the appetitive part. And that should sound kind of familiar at this point, I think it about Plato. And the appetitive part just wants things, right? It wants things and it hates things, okay? So, you know, good tasting food, well, it wants that. It hates bad tasting food. It wants food. It wants to love. It wants to, you know, to possess, right? It wants a whole lot of things. Now the problem with the appetitive part, and this is what we share with the animals, is that it wants all these things, but it doesn't have any real way to discern between them. It just kind of wants and grabs and gets at it. So this isn't exactly, you know, irrational at this point. It's more like just non-rational. The appetitive part just wants things. So that's the irrational part of this. But the rational part of us, reason, right? That's the part that starts figuring out which things to want, or it doesn't figure out which things to want. It figures out which of these wants to go after. It figures out which of these wants to go after. So that's going to require knowledge of the world, what it's like. It's going to require understanding the four causes of everything. What kind of thing it is? What's it made of? Where it came from? And when we deal with ethics, what its purpose is, what its end is, what its final cause is, what is it supposed to be, or what is it, you know, what is its being that would be most fulfilled. So we need reason. We need the rational part of this to find this final cause. So in answering the question, what is our happiness, we have to answer the question, what is our final cause?