Friends, honor, pleasure, and moral virtue may be worth choosing for two reasons: for their intrinsic value and for their contribution to happiness. Aristotle's ethics is eudaimonistic, meaning that every action is ultimately to be justified by reference to the person's own happiness.
For Aristotle, anything that fulfills its essential function is one that performs well. He believes that the nature of a thing is the measure in terms of which we judge whether or not it is functioning well. In Aristotle's opinion, things are good when they achieve their specific ends.
According to Aristotle, there is an end of all of the actions that we perform which we desire for the sake of itself. This is what he refers to as eudaimonia, which is desired for its own sake with all other things being desired for the purpose of the ultimate goal. Eudaimonia is a property of one's life when considered in its entirety. Flourishing is the highest...
It is success as a human being.
In modern times, we understand that one's own life is the only life we have to live. In Aristotle's opinion, the "good" is what is objectively good for a particular human being. Aristotle's eudaimonia is egotistic in that a person's normal reason for choosing particular actions comes from the idea that he must pursue his own flourishing to make his life excellent. Because self-interest is flourishing, the good in human conduct is linked to the self-interest of the acting person.
Bibliography
Johnston, Ian. (November 18, 1997). Lecture on Aristotle's Nicomachaean Ethics. Public Domain.
Lear, Gabriel. (2004). Happy Lives and the Highest Good: An Essay on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Princeton University Press.
Wikipedia. (2005). Eudaimonia. Retrieved from the Internet at http://www.wikipedia.com.
