 So I'm not saying you have to agree with Aristotle. You can disagree with them, that's up to you. It's your responsibility and it's your burden, not mine. But what does it mean to disagree with Aristotle here? Well, there's three possibilities. Either that happiness is not the chief good, that what? Happiness isn't a good at all. Or that what? Maybe reason isn't this chief excellence. So Aristotle says that reason, the intellect, is the excellence. This is what you really, really need to have everything else. OK. So what about, let's see, maybe happiness isn't the chief good. OK. So what this means then is that happiness, this well-being, this good living, is an instrumental good. It's good for something else. I guess. But what would that be? I mean, I don't think it could be something within oneself. It had to be something extrinsic to oneself. So what you're good for is something else. OK. Another person? The state? A cause, an ideal? I mean, these are possibilities. But then all your well-being, all your good living is good for is something else. Maybe what? Maybe happiness isn't a good at all. That would seem a little weird. If it's not a good at all, then there's something out there that's very definitely worth your misery. But the early suggestion, to say the happiness is not a chief good, it's an instrumental good. Your happiness is a good, but it's a good for something else. With this suggestion, your happiness isn't that well-being. This good living isn't good for anything, instrumental or independent. I guess. That's kind of tough, too. But, you know, OK, that's the way you can go. Maybe it's that reason is not the excellence. OK, well, if reason isn't the excellence, then either bodily health, emotional tranquility, or self-discipline are the excellence. It's one of those, too. Well, one of these other things is the chief good. How is the chief good? So think about it, right? So Aristotle is claiming that the intellect is the excellence of a person, because the intellect informs everything else. OK, so how would you use bodily health if you don't have knowledge of what's healthy? You can't trust the body in this. The body does lots of things that aren't necessarily healthy. Same thing with emotion, same thing with desire. How can you understand or acquire tranquility when you don't know how to acquire it? Emotions do not tranquilize themselves. If you're going to say that the intellect is not the excellence of a person, then somehow one of the other three parts of what you are, acquire the good without the use of the intellect. And even more importantly, the intellect, as I mentioned, is the only part of you that can kind of correct itself. Only the intellect can tell you whether the knowledge that you had actually is a knowledge, so the beliefs that you have are untrue, something like that. Health can't tell you whether your beliefs are false. Only the intellect, only reason can do that. So if you're going to say that the intellect is not the excellence of a person, then you've got to be able to explain how any of these other three can acquire their goods without the use of the intellect. You kind of need the intellect for health, for tranquility, and for discipline, but you need the intellect for the intellect. So yeah, I'm not saying you have to agree with Aristotle, but if you disagree with them, are they going to say happiness is not the chief good? Your happiness, your well-being is good for something else. You are now an instrument. Your happiness isn't a good at all. Your misery is worth something. If you're not well-being, if you're not living a good life, that may or may not be a bad thing. Or how the intellect is not the chief good, how the other goods can do what they need to do without the intellect.