ETHICS The most interesting part of the dialogue, however, is an argument to the eVect that neither pleasure nor wisdom can be the essence of a happy life, but that only a mixed life that has both pleasure and wisdom in it would really be worth choosing Someone who had every pleasure from moment to moment, but was devoid of reason, would not be happy because he would be able neither to remember nor to anticipate any pleasure other than the present: he would be living not a human life but the life of a mollusc (21a–d) But a purely intellectual life without any pleasure would equally be intolerable (21e) Neither life would be ‘sufWcient, perfect, or worthy of choice’ The Wnal good consists in a harmonious proportion between pleasure and wisdom (63c–65a) Aristotle on Eudaimonia The criteria for a good life set out in the Philebus reappear in Aristotle’s account of the good life The good we are looking for, he says, at the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics, must be perfect by comparison with other ends—that is, it must be something sought always for its own sake and never for the sake of something else; and it must be self-sufWcient, that is, it must be something which taken on its own makes life worthwhile and lacking in nothing These, he goes on, are the properties of happiness (eudaimonia) (NE 1097a15–b21) In all Aristotle’s ethical treatises the notion of happiness plays a central role This is brought out more clearly, however, in the Eudemian Ethics, and in my exposition I will begin by following this rather than the more familiar text of the Nicomachean Ethics The treatise begins with the inquiry: what is a good life and how is it to be acquired? (EE 1 1214a15) We are oVered Wve candidate answers to the second question (by nature, by learning, by discipline, by divine favour, and by luck) and seven candidate answers to the Wrst (wisdom, virtue, pleasure, honour, reputation, riches, and culture) (1 1214a32, b9) Aristotle immediately eliminates some answers to the second question: if happiness comes purely by nature or by luck or by grace, then it will be beyond most people’s reach and they can nothing about it (1 1215a15) But a full answer to the second question obviously depends on the answer to the Wrst: and Aristotle works on that by asking the question: what makes life worth living? 266