Aristotle at the Very Beginning of Book

Aristotle

At the very beginning of Book I Chapter XIII, Aristotle states that "happiness is a certain activity of soul in conformity with perfect virtue" (Ethics 1102a). What he means here, quite simply, is that true happiness can only be defined as the state that is achieved in a perfectly virtuous person; it cannot be defined any other way -- not by pleasure, or bestowed honor, or wealth, or any other illusion. This paper will explore the reasoning behind this belief.

The generality of men," Aristotle states, "identify the Good [or Happiness] with pleasure, and accordingly are content with the Life of Enjoyment" (Ethics 1095b). He explains later (particularly in Book X) what is incomplete about the "Life of Enjoyment," but the gist of his argument is quite clear, almost obvious, to us today: Happiness, we feel, is something Human, something that other animals will never achieve because it is a Human thing, someway bound to contemplation or self-recognition; as Aristotle states, "The whole of the life of the gods is blessed, and that of man is so in so far as it contains some likeness to the divine activity; but none of the other animals possess happiness, because they are entirely incapable of contemplation" (Ethics 1178b). Since pleasure is clearly not a solely human thing, it cannot by itself account for happiness.

Aristotle's description of honor is in some ways more interesting. "Men of refinement," he declares, "... And men of action think that the good is honor -- for this may be said to be the end of the Life of Politics. But honor after all seems too superficial to be the Good for which we are seeking; since it appears to depend on those who confer it more than on him upon whom it is conferred" (Ethics 1095b). And, as Aristotle and most of us since believe, Happiness is something personal and subjective, which cannot be determined by anyone but ourselves. This brings up some interesting contrasts with Eastern philosophies, which in some senses seem to be centered around honor; that is, however, not the topic of this essay. In any case, parallels between the ancient philosophy and popular concerns of the present day -- whether true happiness should be sought within or external opinions should be focused on -- are, as they are so often in these writings, striking.

Wealth, finally, is dismissed much more easily. For it even more than honor is bestowed by others, not oneself; and on top of this, it can even be won at birth. As the philosopher puts curtly, "The Life of Money-making is a constrained kind of life, and clearly wealth is not the Good we are in search of, for it is only good as being useful, a means to something else" (Ethics 1096a).

The implication we are seeing in all of these passages is that Happiness must be an End, and indeed Aristotle considers Happiness "the highest of all the goods that action can achieve" (Ethics 1095a1), defining the concept of Happiness as that ultimate sense of goodness whose existence, indeed, is intuited by everyone. That is to say, we all feel that there is something we are striving for, or something we are aiming at, in life; and Aristotle points out that this, this fundamental thing that all (or most) of us intuit, should be the definition of goodness: "If there be something which is the end of all the things done by human action," he writes, "this will be the practicable Good" (Ethics 1097a).

From Goodness, the relationship to Happiness is direct. Aristotle first points out that something truly Final (a true End) is by definition something "chosen always as an end and never as a means" (Ethics 1097a). He continues, "Happiness above all else appears to be absolutely final in this sense, since we always choose it for its own sake and never as a means to something else" (Ethics 1097a-b). In other words, we may seek other things, such as the pleasure, honor, and wealth mentioned above, to help secure happiness for ourselves; but we will never seek happiness in order to attain the other things. As he defines it quite clearly in Book X, Happiness is "the End of human life" (Ethics 1176a).

With this, Aristotle's interpretation of Happiness comes quite clear and the core argument is revealed as something refreshingly simple: Do you feel we humans are striving for something final or ultimate? Yes. Do you suspect that a perfect man would be he who has wholly attained this ultimate thing? Yes. Isn't such a thing, a positive end which is a means toward nothing else, generally defined verbally as "Happiness"? Yes. As is so often the case with Aristotle's writings, this explanation once understood seems quite obvious!

Despite its apparent simplicity, much more light is shed on this topic in Book X, which focuses on pleasure. Although, as discussed above, pleasure can be distinguished from happiness simply because it is not unique to humans, one might argue that the type of pleasure humans experience is somehow different from that experienced by animals -- and that this difference is what defines Human Happiness. To discourage arguments like this, as well as simply to explore the nature of pleasure, Aristotle brainstormed a variety of characteristics distinguishing pleasure from Happiness or Goodness, one of which -- the most important -- will be gone over here.

In Book X, Aristotle informs us that Happiness cannot be entirely a function of a person's character, that is to say, one cannot be entirely predisposed toward happiness naturally. Because if Happiness were entirely in one's character, the philosopher points out, "it might be possessed by a man who passed the whole of his chosen life asleep, living the life of a vegetable, or by one who was plunged in the deepest misfortune" (Ethics 1176a). These are things, as above, that we intuitively sense prohibit or discourage happiness -- therefore happiness being driven solely by character seems unlikely.