"Aim at Some Good"

I just read a chapter in my philosophy textbook that talks about Aristotle, who argued that "All human activities aim at some good." This claim seems dubious, considering how much evildoing there is in the world (evidently, enough that "evildoing" is considered a real word by my spell checker). However, I think that this claim could be true, depending on how we define two words in it: good and aim.

First, good. "Good" isn't always an adjective meaning "righteous" or "desirable." It is sometimes a noun meaning a product. Vendors who sell products are said to sell goods. Thus, Aristotle may have meant that "All human activities aim to produce or accomplish something." That is, people have reasons for the things they do. This is, arguably, universally true.

Usually, if not always, the reason people do things is that they want things, and the thing they want usually ultimately ends up being happiness (at least, that's my opinion, and it may be Aristotle's too, if I understood the chapter correctly). Yet, even if every human action is performed with the goal of producing happiness, at least for the actor, that doesn't mean that every human action will result in happiness.

This is where the "aim" interpretation comes in. An actor may "aim" for happiness in performing an act (and I think we can all agree that happiness is "good"), but that doesn't mean they'll hit it. For example, one person might aim for happiness by, say, killing another person, because they believe that they, and perhaps the rest of the world, would be happier without that other person, but the action of committing murder will certainly result in unhappiness instead. Many evil acts are disguised and/or baited with the promise of happiness, thus causing many people to miss the mark. They may be aiming for happiness, a good thing, but they miss it because they're actually shooting at the wrong targets.

Thus, one way or another, I think it could be said that "All human activities aim at some good," but to truly understand what that claim means, one has to determine what goods people are aiming for and how good their aim is.