Term Paper on "Aristotle in the First Line"

Term Paper 7 pages (1807 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Aristotle

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 criteria to evaluate goods, such as pleasure, wealth, honor, moral virtue, and philosophical contemplation, which humans have at one time or other 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.

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 emphasized (Lear, 2004). Aristotle argues that the happiest life is one in which a person "does everything" for philosophical contemplation. He argues that a life lived for the sake of morally virtuous activity is also happy, though in a lesser sense.

The classical Greek word "eudaimonia," which is fequently seen in Aristotle's writings, as the word "happiness (Wikipedia, 2005)." However, Princeton University Aristotle scholar John Cooper provides an alternate translation, "human flourishing."

According to Aristotle and many other classical philosophers, the hierarchy of human goals aims at a higher end: eudaimonia (happiness or human flourishing) (Wikipedia, 2005). This is the end that everyone in fact aims for, and it is the only end towards which it is worth undertaking means.

Eudaimonia is constituted, in Aristotle's opinion, not by honor, or 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 wittiness; the intellectual virtues, including rationality in judgment; and it also includes non-sacrificial (mutually beneficial) friendships and scientific knowledge.

At an Institute for Transpersonal Psychology talk, 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, an activity at which a person experiences eudaimonia is an indication to what that person's life work (as far as spiritual and personal fulfillment are concerned) is.

In the Nicomachaean Ethics, philosopher Aristotle expresses many fundamental concerns, including the following: "What objective grounds do we have for arguing that there is a way of evaluating moral life so as to counter the skepticism of the sophists, including the view of Thrasymachus that justice is merely the interest of the strong in society who create laws and moral systems to provide a conventional justification for their own self-interest? (Johnston, 1997)"

Aristotle's attempts to answer this question are based on finding sure grounds on which to base the moral life (Johnston, 1997). Aristotle's Ethics is an attempt to resolve one basic problem: "either one must find a transcendent, objective reality of pure goodness (the Form of the Good) radically separated from the imperfect sensible world, or one must concede moral enquiry to the sophists and relativists."

Aristotle first establishes the idea of goal-directed activity as the concept necessary for an understanding of human goodness and excellence (Johnston, 1997). He then seeks a definition of what is the ultimate goal of human life, the most important activity that humans pursue for its own sake, something much more than all the other goods (such as fortune, fame, learning, and more).

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

Therefore, the term eudaimonia encompasses a sense of material, psychological, and physical well being over time, as 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 traditions, 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. According to: "We may better get a sense of what Aristotle means by the term if we take the advice of one interpreter and see eudaimonia as the answer to the question 'What sort of a life would we most wish for our children?'"

It is important to note that eudaimonia is one of many goals desired; yet it is also, for Aristotle, clearly superior to all of these goals (Johnston, 1997). This observation can be confusing.

The best way to make sense of the notion is to observe happiness as something of a framework for all the other various goods that we aim for. We achieve eudaimonia with the correct ordering of such items, by imposing a pattern on our activities that gives all of them the fitting significance, by adopting a suitable hierarchy for all the different goods pursued by mankind. Therefore, eudaimonia consists of many different goods and will provide the general significance to all of them (providing a significant meaning to our lives). Eudaimonia is not achieved by actively seeking it. Rather, it is attained it by ordering our pursuit of all the other goods in the propoer manner. Happiness, which is the highest and final goal of human existence, is, in other words, somewhat of a by-product of carrying out our pursuit of all the other goods (wealth, fame, learning, and so on) in the correct manner.

Aristotle believes that the happiest life is lived for the sake of contemplation, rather than virtue (Lear, 2004). His long dialogues on moral virtue and friendship and his evident admiration for the morally virtuous person lead most people to assume that, according to Aristotle, the human good is the exercise of practical, and not theoretical, virtue. It appears that, in Aristotle's opinion, the happy life aims at a monistic good.

However, there are two problems for a monistic interpretation, both of which come 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, However, morally virtuous actions are not just worth choosing for their own sakes; they must be chosen for their own sakes. Thus, it appears that the happy person does not aim at eudaimonia as an end in everything he does, despite what Aristotle argues in his writings.

The second problem is even more complex (Lear, 2004). In viewing happiness as the practical goal of the happy life, Aristotle indicates that things contribute to the flourishing of a 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, this means that, if eudaimonia is a monistic end, such as contemplation, all other goods, including the intrinsically valuable goods and even morally virtuous action, are elements of the happy life because they all contribute to contemplation. This seems unlikely, however.

It is more likely that intrinsically valuable goods are parts of the good life because they are the good things they are, regardless of what they result in. In fact, that seems to be what we mean by saying that they are choiceworthy for their own sakes. Unless intrinsically valuable goods are actually elements of the highest good, Aristotle's conception of happiness as… READ MORE

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