Finally, it is important to emphasize that, while developing our other capacities – e.g., as athletes, musicians, lovers, friends, parents, game- players, etc. – is important, for Socrates and Aristotle it is very clear that there is nothing more important than the task of cultivating and practicing excellence as a human being – meaning, as a human being engaged with making ethical and political judgments and choices. In particular, if we subordinate our cultivation of excellence as ethical and political beings to any other activity – e.g., the pursuit of wealth or power – we thereby put our capacity for reason and ethical judgment at risk. Indeed, Socrates and Aristotle argue that, if we allow our interests in wealth and power to persuade us to judge and act against our reason and better judgment, we thereby harm these capacities (just as we would harm a race-horse, to use Socrates’ analogy, by using it as a plow-horse instead). But, if we harm and hence diminish these capacities, we thereby undermine the capacities most central to our discerning what is genuinely good, pursuing it, and thereby achieving
eudaimonia or well-being.