Hi everyone. This is another first year of college essay I wrote concerning Aristotle and happiness as the supreme practical good. Don't take what I say in it to be completely right or wrong but I hope it's of use to somebody!
Aristotle was a an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover a wide variety of topics, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theatre, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato’s teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. In this essay I will assess his understanding of the concept of happiness as a supreme practical good.
In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle emphasizes the belief that doing good and achieving “supreme happiness” is every man’s desire. He argues that while people speak of acquired happiness in a variety of ways, true happiness comes from the activity of using what he calls humanity’s highest function: rationalising through the human mind. In order for us to be truly happy, we must be truly committed to doing good. If we are truly happy, we will never have to worry about being distressed. Happiness is found truly in the journey of life, not in the arriving of some destination, or the end itself.
Aristotle completely agrees with that point of view, in his words he describes happiness, or the human good, as the activity of soul exhibiting excellence. That activity of soul exhibiting excellence is in the journey, but in the journey to what? Happiness is the ultimate end or goal of being completely virtuous, but it is something that is found in the activity of striving for that end. He believes that animals and children cannot experience happiness because they are not capable of being happy. Aristotle believes that happiness is the ultimate end or goal of being completely virtuous but some actions that people perform might be good but are not necessarily completely virtuous.
Since humans desire happiness for no larger purpose, Aristotle considers it the highest good man hopes to achieve, unlike honour, excellence, intelligence or wealth. He upholds that wealth alone is not happiness as wealth is just a monetary value but can be used to gain some happiness. Like wealth, he thinks honour is not happiness, because honour focuses more on the people that honour, rather than he who is honoured. Pleasure is not happiness either, because "the life of gratification" is "completely slavish, since the life they decide on is the life for grazing animals." The last is virtue, and virtue is not happiness either, since one could be virtuous and not use it. Instead, Aristotle says that happiness is a combination of the four. Thus, Aristotle describes the good life by saying that, "the happy person is one who expresses complete virtue in his activities, with an adequate supply of external goods, not just for any time but for a complete life."
So, the good life consists of moral and intellectual virtue, a certain measure of goods, and friendship. But Aristotle is also interested in the relationship between happiness, on the one hand, and pleasure and contemplation, on the other. He wants to avoid that "pleasure is the good" and the other extreme that "it is altogether base." Aristotle's middle view is that, while pleasure is choice worthy," some pleasures are
good and contribute to happiness. Aristotle believes that living involves activity motivated by desire, and pleasure follows successful activity. Yet happiness is not just amusement but is a means to productive activity, rather than an end to itself.
Aristotle finishes off his discussion of ethical living with a slightly more detailed description of attaining true happiness. According to Aristotle, pleasure is not a good in itself, he argued, since it is, by its nature, incomplete. But worthwhile activities are often associated with their own distinctive pleasures. Hence, we are rightly guided in life by our natural preference for engaging in pleasant activities rather than in unpleasant ones.
Genuine happiness lies in actions that leads to virtue, since this alone provides true value and not just amusement. Thus, Aristotle held that contemplation is the highest form of moral activity because it is continuous, pleasant, self-sufficient, and complete. In intellectual activity, human beings most nearly approach a blessed divinity, while realizing all of the genuine human virtues as well.
In thus defining human happiness, Aristotle does not aim at determining which good is absolutely supreme, but only that which relatively is the highest for man in his present condition.
Aristotle makes happiness and the highest good to consist in virtuous action, yet he does not exclude pleasure, but holds that pleasure in it’s purest form comes from virtue. Pleasure completes an action and is added to it. Therefore, Aristotle places man's highest good in his perfection, which is identical with his happiness and carries with it pleasure.
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