Why Aristotle believed that philosophy was humanity’s highest purpose

The purpose of a knife is to cut. The purpose of an eye is to see. The purpose of an architect is to build. And judging whether each of these entities is any good at executing their given task seems simple enough. But, generally speaking, what’s the purpose of a human life? Aristotle believed that deducing a human’s highest function (ergon), and being able to decipher whether a human met that function with excellence (aretê), was necessary if we were to truly understand how human beings can flourish. In this whiteboard explainer, Monte R Johnson, a professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, details why Aristotle came to the (perhaps self-aggrandising) conclusion that engaging our highest intellectual capabilities – and, above all else, philosophising – was the highest purpose of a human life.