IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2022 - 25

he takes as the purpose or goal of every human life.
That goal is, in Greek, eudaimonia. Now that term
is sometimes translated as happiness, but it doesn't
mean just subjective happiness, I think " flourishing "
is a better translation. Aristotle supposes that someone
might be subjectively happy, and yet not free.
Say, for example, you were hooked up to some sort
of pleasure machine in some version of " the Matrix "
where those who were hooked up are caused to feel
subjective pleasure but have no choice in the matter.
Those hooked to the machine are, in a thin sense,
subjectively happy, but they are not flourishing. Aristotle
supposed, I think rightly, that certain conditions
must be met in order for human life to go well, for
an individual to flourish. The basic condition is that
we must have the opportunity freely to exercise the
capacities that define the human being, that is, that
differentiates us as humans, from other animals. To
decide what those capacities are, we must understand
what kind of being we are. For Aristotle, and
for me, we humans are part of biological nature, that
means asking: What kind of animals are we?
Aristotle's answer is we are " political animals. "
But what does that mean? First, it means that we
are social rather than solitary and then we are community
dwellers, rather than the kind of animal that
lives in random herds. And, finally, we are producers
of common goods, that is together we make things
that enable us to live our lives together-things we
could not produce just as individuals who happen
to live nearby one another and who exchange goods
and services with one another.
Thus far, for Aristotle, we humans are in the same
category of being as harvester ants and honeybees.
Aristotle makes this comparison explicit. But to differentiate
us from some other " political animals, " Aristotle
introduces another subdivision. We, humans,
are the kind of animals that-like ants according
to Aristotle (and confirmed by modern ant entomological
research)-the kind of animals that do not
require a ruler. We have the capacity to live each as
our own master. This means that the social order that
we create is, or at least can be, a product of self-organization.
Social order can be, for us, bottom-up,
produced by the contribution of each, rather than
top-down, imposed by the orders of a boss.
Now, for Aristotle, humans are not only a self-organizing
and common-goods-producing kind of
political animal, but we are also the most political
of animals. Why is that? Because the common goods
June 2022
that we produce and make use of are more complex,
and for Aristotle of higher value, than, say, the honey
or the store of grain that is produced by bees or ants,
his prime examples of other species of political animals.
And therefore, if we are to flourish, we humans
must do more than live in a way that gains us physical
security and material welfare. Like all other animals,
we must do that. But we must do more than
that if we are to flourish-if we are truly to live well,
to fulfill our potential as the kinds of beings we are.
If we are to flourish as social beings, who necessarily
live in communities, we must live in some sort of
moral community.
It is important to pause here to underline the fact
that Aristotle does not mean a moralistic community.
He means moral in the sense of a community that is
just (in the sense of fair) and good (in the sense of
good for each of us). We can flourish as individuals
in moral communities according to Aristotle only by
exercising our natural capacities. Our natural capacities
include a strong kind of sociability, as political
animals. But our capacities also include the use of
reason, that is, the capacity to understand right and
wrong as well as advantages and disadvantages.
And, finally, we have a unique capacity for language-that
is, a capacity to communicate to one
another, in highly complex ways, concerning the
things that we reason about: right and wrong, advantages
and disadvantages.
So, to be a fully realized individual is to live in
a secure, reasonably prosperous moral community,
contributing to it through reason and speech, with
the aim of producing high-order common goods.
Aristotle thought that to be a fully realized human
requires the leisure that allows for substantial time
spent on philosophical contemplation. But contemplation,
as a value, gets us into territory that I don't
have time to discuss today.
Remember that we are the kind of animals who
do not require a ruler. But we do need social order.
When things go right for us, we humans create and
maintain social order by each of us ruling and being
ruled over in turns. That is, we share the burdens
of doing the political work necessary to sustain the
community. None of us is a permanent ruler. No one
is permanently ruled over. And we need have no
master but our collective selves.
In brief, then, the conditions of optimum flourishing
require us, as individuals, to employ speech and
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2022

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