Abstract

Some contemporary philosophers recommend that you plan your life. Lifeplanning is selecting a sequence of actions aimed at an ultimate end. Inclusive endians include all major desires in the ultimate end, while exclusive endians exclude all desires but one. ;Contemporary interpreters take Aristotle to be a lifeplanner. Exclusive endians think Aristotle's happy life aims at interludes of contemplation or interludes of practical activity . Inclusive endians think it aims at interludes of both types . ;I dissolve the inclusive v. exclusive dispute by arguing that Aristotle advocates lifechoosing rather than lifeplanning. ;Lifechoosing is selecting a life composed of aspects . Leading that type of life is the desired ultimate end. ;Interpreted as a life chooser Aristotle is discussing the life of reflective aspects and the life of ethical aspects . ;I argue that Aristotle's happy life is self-sufficient , self-actualizing , unified , and normative . Moreover, Aristotle's contemplative/complete life contains his practical/political life. ;I interpret Aristotle as a lifechooser because: The meditative and activist lives are neither self-sufficient nor self-actualizing; the mixed life is neither unified nor normative; but the reflective life has all four properties. The meditative life does not contain the activist or mixed lives, but the reflective life contains the ethical life. The presuppositions of lifeplanning are unAristotelian and mistaken, but the presuppositions of lifechoosing are Aristotelian and correct. The lifeplanning interpretation makes the Nicomachean Ethics incoherent, but the lifechoosing interpretation does not