Nichomachean Ethics

Aristotle Ethics

In Book X of the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle offers several definitions of happiness (eudaimonia) which can exist at the level of physical pleasure, a life of civil involvement and practicing virtue, or the ultimate form of happiness which is the contemplation of God and spiritual and eternal matters. Just as there are degrees of pleasure and pain, so there are degrees or happiness and virtue. Happiness is the supreme good and the ultimate goal of life, but not all individuals define it in the same way and it appears that only a few truly reach the highest levels. Most people confuse happiness with physical pleasure and carnal gratification, including food, alcohol, sex, and accumulating money and material things, but Aristotle does not regard this as the supreme good. Far from it, although it probably seems satisfying enough for the great majority of humanity that happiness should be identified with a life of abundance of physical pleasure and the absence of pain. Many people are slaves to passions and pleasures, so the glutton who finds happiness with consumption of food will have no higher goal than good food, and the alcoholic will be happy with an abundance of intoxicants. Even animals exist this way, but for Aristotle humans are rational beings with immortal souls and were therefore created for a much higher and transcendent form of happiness. Aristotle privileges the higher or rational part of the soul (nous), which able to have communion with the divine, rather than the lower, animalistic lusts and instincts.

On the level of civic virtue and the life of the citizen, some people value honor, fame and glory, such as his student Alexander the Great. Their greatest happiness would come from being remembered forever like Achilles as a great hero or conqueror, but Aristotle is skeptical such ethics as well. A better form of civic virtue would be to doing good for its own sake and practicing justice with no thought of reward or fame. True happiness on this level would be to find pleasure in ethical and virtuous behavior as a member of human society and citizen of the state. Good citizens will get pleasure from a life of public service, a way of life in fact, at least for those who are not adept in metaphysics, theology and contemplation of God.

Aristotle also believed in the rule of moderation or the happy medium as the true location of virtues and avoiding extremes of personal conduct. In Chapter 9, Aristotle argues that persuasion and reason alone will not make a bad person good, however, since the individual character is formed in youth. Young people also refrain from bad actions not out of shame but fear of punishment, lacking any personal conception of the noble or good life. At this lowest level of happiness, inferior characters operate on the purely on the basis of physical necessity and fear of pain and punishment. Bad people can only be corrected by fear and coercion, or denying them their greatest pleasures, because they are essentially animal-like. Every person is born with a soul, but they must all be cultivated and trained in the habits of a virtuous life. Those with good characters will learn to love what is noble and hate what is base, and the laws of the state should ensure the proper type of training for the young. Aristotle mentions that the Spartans have given the most consideration to training and habituating the young in the proper virtues, but in most other states people are simply left to live as they please. States and households both should encourage this type of training in virtue, though, which leads Aristotle into his discussion of Politics.

As Aristotle explains in Chapter 7, the happiness associated with the contemplative life is by far superior to that associated with the civil or political life, no matter how virtuous. In fact, he even refers to the superhuman quality of this type of life, which might be beyond the capabilities or ordinary mortals. He also explains that this type of life requires more leisure than the life of politics or military service, but it is still the best life and brings the greatest happiness. Since the nous of humanity is also divine, it has a natural longing for transcendence to the spiritual level, which is the greatest good. Aristotle seems to be saying, however, that in order to fully live in this way, the individual will have to withdraw from the day-to-day concerns of politics, public service or civic duties. Certainly the base and animal-like majority who spend all their time dwelling on food, sex and physical desires can have no part of this higher spiritual happiness. Perhaps the true contemplatives would have to live secluded lives as monks, nuns or hermits, away from all the cares and temptations of the world. In this area, later Christian theologians and philosophers found much in Aristotle's Ethics that was congenial, especially his contempt for the life of hedonism and physical pleasure and the deliberate cultivation of virtues. In their case, though, the main goal was salvation of the soul rather than happiness.