You said, "Aristotle explained how you cannot judge whether a flute player is good without knowing what flute playing is for". I guess I'd have to ask you, how would you define a "good" flute player? If we're just talking skill then I would have to disagree. Was he speaking more of the motive behind his playing, the "why" when he is referencing the term "good"? One could use flute playing then for many different reasons from religious, to storytelling or just for personal enjoyment.
Excellent question—the larger context of what he is writing is helpful. Aristotle is discussing the function (ergon) and purpose (telos) of the activity itself, so personal motives are irrelevant to his argument. He is saying that a “good” flute player plays the flute excellently, and determining if it is done “excellently” can only be determined by reference to what flute-playing is for.
This is from the Nicomachean Ethics, and he notes that for anything with a defining activity, the good and the well are in the activity. So the good of the flute player is not “whatever the person happens to have in mind,” but excellence at playing the flute. As you know far better than me, the standard is internal to the action: producing the sound, technique, expression, the musical result, etc. This is what constitutes skillful flute-playing (or skillful anything, for that matter). Without knowing the function, there is no criterion for calling the performance or the player good or bad. If I don’t know what a flute is and assume it should be used in a ping-pong match, I may be using the flute; I may call it flute-playing, but it is objectively “not good” because the purpose does not align with the function.
So the player’s motives are distinct. As you rightly mention, someone can play in a religious context, in storytelling, for personal enjoyment, to earn an income, to claim status, or any combination of these. Everyone has their own reasons for the activity, but those reasons do not redefine what counts as doing it well. If that were the case, we wouldn’t encourage music students to practice, because there would be no way to define improvement. And even if a musician’s personal motives are abhorrent, the technical and musical excellence of their playing remains excellent. This is actually one of my major gripes about a lot of so-called Christian entertainment (particularly movies and storytelling). It is argued that the motives are good, the mission is sound, and this should be more important than the final result. We aren’t supposed to care if it’s cheesy, forced, generic, or uncompelling; we are just supposed to accept it as a net positive. Sincerity in flute-playing doesn’t make the flute-playing good. Aristotle separates the excellence proper to the craft from the agent’s further ends or the moral evaluation of those ends.
Aristotle goes on to make a related point about arts versus virtues. He explains that the products of the arts “have their goodness in themselves,” so we can judge the result (or the skill that produced it) without needing to inspect the artist’s character or ultimate purpose in the same way we must for virtuous action. Skill is the relevant standard. If the claim were only about raw technical ability divorced from any notion of the activity’s point, the objection you raise is sound. But Aristotle’s point is that the notion of skill is the notion of fulfilling the function well. Certainly, different motives and social contexts can give flute-playing many “whys,” but they do not erase the teleological standard internal to the practice. That is what lets us say, non-arbitrarily, that one person is a better flute player than another.
You said, "Aristotle explained how you cannot judge whether a flute player is good without knowing what flute playing is for". I guess I'd have to ask you, how would you define a "good" flute player? If we're just talking skill then I would have to disagree. Was he speaking more of the motive behind his playing, the "why" when he is referencing the term "good"? One could use flute playing then for many different reasons from religious, to storytelling or just for personal enjoyment.
Excellent question—the larger context of what he is writing is helpful. Aristotle is discussing the function (ergon) and purpose (telos) of the activity itself, so personal motives are irrelevant to his argument. He is saying that a “good” flute player plays the flute excellently, and determining if it is done “excellently” can only be determined by reference to what flute-playing is for.
This is from the Nicomachean Ethics, and he notes that for anything with a defining activity, the good and the well are in the activity. So the good of the flute player is not “whatever the person happens to have in mind,” but excellence at playing the flute. As you know far better than me, the standard is internal to the action: producing the sound, technique, expression, the musical result, etc. This is what constitutes skillful flute-playing (or skillful anything, for that matter). Without knowing the function, there is no criterion for calling the performance or the player good or bad. If I don’t know what a flute is and assume it should be used in a ping-pong match, I may be using the flute; I may call it flute-playing, but it is objectively “not good” because the purpose does not align with the function.
So the player’s motives are distinct. As you rightly mention, someone can play in a religious context, in storytelling, for personal enjoyment, to earn an income, to claim status, or any combination of these. Everyone has their own reasons for the activity, but those reasons do not redefine what counts as doing it well. If that were the case, we wouldn’t encourage music students to practice, because there would be no way to define improvement. And even if a musician’s personal motives are abhorrent, the technical and musical excellence of their playing remains excellent. This is actually one of my major gripes about a lot of so-called Christian entertainment (particularly movies and storytelling). It is argued that the motives are good, the mission is sound, and this should be more important than the final result. We aren’t supposed to care if it’s cheesy, forced, generic, or uncompelling; we are just supposed to accept it as a net positive. Sincerity in flute-playing doesn’t make the flute-playing good. Aristotle separates the excellence proper to the craft from the agent’s further ends or the moral evaluation of those ends.
Aristotle goes on to make a related point about arts versus virtues. He explains that the products of the arts “have their goodness in themselves,” so we can judge the result (or the skill that produced it) without needing to inspect the artist’s character or ultimate purpose in the same way we must for virtuous action. Skill is the relevant standard. If the claim were only about raw technical ability divorced from any notion of the activity’s point, the objection you raise is sound. But Aristotle’s point is that the notion of skill is the notion of fulfilling the function well. Certainly, different motives and social contexts can give flute-playing many “whys,” but they do not erase the teleological standard internal to the practice. That is what lets us say, non-arbitrarily, that one person is a better flute player than another.