Christopher Shields is Professor of Classical Philosophy in the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall.  He is the author of Order in Multiplicity: Homonymy in the Philosophy of Aristotle (Oxford University Press: 1999), Classical Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge: 2003), Aristotle (Routledge: 2007), Ancient Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge: 2011), and, with Robert Pasnau, The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (Westview: 2003).  He is the editor of The Blackwell Guide to Ancient Philosophy (Blackwell: 2002) and The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle (Oxford University Press: 2012). Forthcoming is Aristotle's De Anima, Translated with Introduction and Commentary (Oxford University Press).

Abstract

Aristotle criticizes Plato’s Form of the Good by insisting that goodness is not ‘something common, universal, and one’ (EN 1096a28).  Still, he is happy to insist in his own right that there is some ‘highest (or best) good’ (EN 1094a17-21), namely, eudaimonia, under which all subordinate human goods are ordered. Indeed, he insists that if there were no such overarching good, all action would ultimately be in vain. Although perfectly consistent with one another, these remarks do introduce a genuine tension into Aristotle’s approach to the commensurability of good things—a tension whose exploration points toward some further difficulties in his metaphysics of goodness. This is a tension which is recognised and profitably discussed by Thomas Aquinas, whose view of the matter merits detailed consideration.