Aristotle's Eudaimonia and the Ethics of Human Flourishing

Introduction: Happiness as the Ultimate End

In the first line of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle writes: "Every craft and every inquiry, and likewise every action and every choice, seem to aim at some good; for which reason people have rightly (kalos) concluded that the good is that at which all things aim" (Lear, 2004). He refers to this ultimate goal of the successful life as eudaimonia, or happiness. Aristotle believes that the happy person aims at the human good in every action he takes. Thus, he proposes that we think of happiness not as the property of being happy — a certain feeling of contentment or satisfaction — but as the goal or end for the sake of which the happy person acts.

Aristotle's investigation into happiness is therefore practical. He aims to find a theory of happiness that will help us to live well. His search for this theory is guided by the thought that happiness is the ultimate object of rational desire and action. If we know what a good should be like in order to serve as the end of all of our rational pursuits, then we can use this criterion to evaluate goods — such as pleasure, wealth, honor, moral virtue, and philosophical contemplation — which humans have at one time or another taken to be keys to happiness.

For Aristotle, the happy life must focus on a single kind of good (Lear, 2004). Throughout the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle perceives the happy life as a life of devotion to a single ultimately valuable thing, or type of thing. He also questions whether lives characterized by the pursuit of pleasure or wealth are indeed happy, and he criticizes the idea that honor or moral virtue is the good at which the political life aims.

Aristotle argues that the highest good must be actions in accordance with virtue, "and if there are several, in accordance with the best and most final" (Lear, 2004). Aristotle seems to be saying that happiness — the ultimate goal of the happy life — is a single type of virtuous activity.

Eudaimonia: Definition and Scope

At the end of the Nicomachean Ethics, the impression that happiness is a single kind of good for the sake of which the happy person makes all his decisions is even more strongly emphasized (Lear, 2004). Aristotle argues that the happiest life is one in which a person "does everything" for the sake of philosophical contemplation. He also argues that a life lived for the sake of morally virtuous activity is happy, though in a lesser sense.

The classical Greek word eudaimonia is frequently encountered in Aristotle's writings and is commonly translated as "happiness." However, philosopher John Cooper offers an alternate translation: "human flourishing." According to Aristotle and many other classical philosophers, the hierarchy of human goals ultimately aims at a higher end — eudaimonia — which is the end that everyone in fact pursues, and the only end truly worth undertaking means to achieve (Wikipedia, 2005).

Eudaimonia is constituted, in Aristotle's view, not by honor, wealth, or power, but by rational activity in harmony with excellence (Wikipedia, 2005). This activity manifests the virtues of character — including courage, honesty, pride, friendliness, and wit — as well as the intellectual virtues, including rationality in judgment. It also encompasses non-sacrificial, mutually beneficial friendships and scientific knowledge.

At a talk hosted by the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology, Huston Smith — author of The World's Religions and former professor of Religion at UC Berkeley and of Philosophy at Syracuse and MIT — also translated eudaimonia as personal flourishing (Wikipedia, 2005). According to Smith, the activity at which a person experiences eudaimonia is an indication of what that person's true life work is, as far as spiritual and personal fulfillment are concerned.

Virtue, Contemplation, and the Highest Good

Aristotle identifies this final goal — on the basis of an appeal to experience — as eudaimonia. The definition of this term is controversial, as many scholars believe that Aristotle meant something considerably wider than the word "happiness" suggests (Johnston, 1997). Eudaimonia carries the notion of objective success, the proper conditions of a person's life — what may be called "well-being" or "living well."

The term eudaimonia therefore encompasses material, psychological, and physical well-being over time. The completely happy life will include success for oneself, for one's immediate family, and for one's children. This idea links the Ethics directly with the Greek literary tradition, especially the Iliad, in which the happiness of life includes a sense of posthumous fame and the success of one's children as important components. As one interpreter suggests, we may better grasp what Aristotle means by the term if we consider eudaimonia as the answer to the question: "What sort of life would we most wish for our children?"

Conclusion: The Egotistic Nature of Aristotelian Ethics

However, there are two problems for a monistic interpretation, both of which arise from Aristotle's central claim that happiness is an ultimate end (Lear, 2004). First, Aristotle claims that the happy philosophical life includes morally virtuous activity. Yet morally virtuous actions are not merely worth choosing for their own sakes — they must be chosen for their own sakes. This means that the happy person does not aim at eudaimonia as an end in everything he does, despite what Aristotle argues elsewhere in his writings.

The second problem is even more complex (Lear, 2004). In viewing happiness as the practical goal of the happy life, Aristotle implies that things contribute to a flourishing life in virtue of their teleological relationship to happiness. All goods other than the highest are relevant to our well-being and find a place in the happy life because they are worth choosing for the sake of eudaimonia.

However, if eudaimonia is a monistic end — such as contemplation — then all other goods, including intrinsically valuable goods and even morally virtuous action, are elements of the happy life only insofar as they contribute to contemplation. This conclusion seems implausible. It is more likely that intrinsically valuable goods are parts of the good life because they are good in themselves, regardless of what they lead to. That, in fact, is precisely what we mean when we say that something is choiceworthy for its own sake. Unless intrinsically valuable goods are actually elements of the highest good, Aristotle's conception of happiness as a final end seems incoherent.

In Aristotle's account, some ends may be worth choosing both for their own sakes and for the sake of happiness. 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 in that every action is ultimately to be justified by reference to the agent's own happiness.

For Aristotle, anything that fulfills its essential function is something that performs well. He believes that the nature of a thing is the measure by which we judge whether it is functioning properly. Things are good, in his view, when they achieve their specific ends.

According to Aristotle, there is an end of all the actions we perform — an end we desire for its own sake. This is what he calls eudaimonia: desired for itself, with all other things desired for the sake of this ultimate goal. Eudaimonia is a property of one's life when considered in its entirety. Flourishing is the highest good of human goals and that toward which all actions ultimately aim. It is, simply put, success as a human being.

In modern times, we understand that one's own life is the only life one has to live. In Aristotle's view, 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 derives from the conviction that he must pursue his own flourishing in order to make his life excellent. Because self-interest is flourishing, the good in human conduct is inseparably linked to the self-interest of the acting person.