“Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good.” So begins the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, a piercing and detailed examination of human nature and the ethical life. It is human nature to desire and to seek things that are good, and achieving our idea of what is good is the ultimate end of everything we do. But what exactly is this good? Is it the same to all men, or does it vary? Is living a truly ethical life humanly possible? Is the good life achieved through choice or chance? Practically speaking, how do we live ethically? Aristotle sets out to answer these questions, believing that an understanding of the essence of what is good will “have a great influence on life” and will help us to “hit upon what is right” as we seek to live ethical lives.
Aristotle quickly reasons that their is much truth in the common thought that the greatest good this life has to offer is happiness. Happiness is an end in and of itself, it is universally desirable, and it seems on the surface at least to be that at which all else aims. But what is true happiness? Some say wealth, pleasure, or honor. Yet all of these fall short of being an end in themselves, for they are superficial, external and easily taken away. The true end must be permanent and enduring. Contemplative happiness, which resides in the soul of man and is the result of choice and habit, cannot be taken away and lasts eternally.
To further explore the possibility of happiness being the ultimate good, Aristotle lays down preliminary qualifications to outline the definition of the good, hoping to confirm or displace his theory. Explaining that “that which is in itself worthy of pursuit [is] more final than that which is worthy of pursuit for the sake of something else”, he establishes that the good must be that for whose sake everything else is done, that it must be the end product achievable by action, and that it must be desirable only for itself, and never for the sake of something else. What fulfills these requirements? We choose pleasure, wealth, honor and even virtuous actions like serving and giving both because we see these things as good and because we believe they will contribute to our happiness. Although these are good things, they cannot be the final good because they are chosen both for themselves and for the sake of something else, i.e. happiness, which is “final and self-sufficient”, and “the end of action”. Contemplative happiness is the ultimate good—it alone is a complete and final end of action, sought because it is always desirable in and of itself.
But how is this ethical life of contemplative happiness achieved, and who can find it? Aristotle reasons that man’s unique function on earth is to have an active thought life defined by “actions of the soul implying a rational principle”. Moreover, the function of the ethical man is the “good and noble performance” of these rational principles, accompanied by habitual actions of the soul in accordance with virtue. True happiness is the end product of a life that is filled with “virtuous activity of the soul”, when these acts are performed with genuine delight. Reasoning that “to entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement” Aristotle determines that this virtuous life, with its coexistent happiness, is not the result of chance, but the result of choice and only acquired through habit. Additionally, this rich contemplative happiness is interior rather than exterior. A happy man is happy because his soul contemplates virtue and, like a master craftsman, he “bears all the chances of life becomingly and makes the best of circumstances”. His happiness does not depend on wealth, honor or the outside events in his life, but on his inner virtue. All of these qualities come together to show that happiness is an ultimate end goal that is stable, enduring, universally desirable, and available to any who will choose it.
The greatest good, then, is happiness, and this happiness can be found by anyone who will commit to a life of joy-filled “activities of the soul in accordance with perfect virtue”. This being established, Aristotle turns to consider the nature of virtue in order to better understand how to live virtuously and attain to a happy, ethical life.
Virtue is a state of mind and soul that is established and manifested by our habits, emotions and actions. Aristotle ascertains that each act or state of mind has three forms—an excess, a defect and an intermediate. Acts and thoughts are destroyed by the excess and defect and preserved and perfected by the mean. To act on this intermediate level, one must not only feel or do the right thing, but act “at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way.” Anything less than this falls short of perfect virtue, and thereby, perfect happiness.
Aristotle contemplates a long series of virtues, including courage, temperance, liberality, magnificence, pride, proper ambition, good temper, friendliness, truthfulness, ready wit, shame and justice. Each of these is carefully and thoroughly considered, and with each one Aristotle affirms his conclusion that the intermediate plane is the most virtuous. Courage, for example has an excess and a defect. The excess is over-confidence and the defect is undue fear, while the good intermediate characteristic is an appropriate amount of courage. Pride, likewise, is considered a virtue over it’s counterparts of undue humility and vanity. Aristotle defines a proud man as one who “claims what is in accordance with his merits” while the unduly humble man claims too little and the vain man claims too much. Likewise, friendliness is set above its high and low points of obsequiousness and churlishness, as truthfulness is found to be the mean between a high of boastfulness and a low of mock-modesty.
In this way each of these moral virtues is examined, culminating in a consideration of justice. Saying that justice is “not part of virtue but virtue entire, nor is the contrary injustice a part of vice but vice entire”, Aristotle reasons that justice is, when played out with fairness and equity, a sort of parallel to virtue, and the crowning quality of an otherwise virtuous life or society.
The intellectual virtues differ slightly from the moral virtues, in that they deal more with a rational principle than with a state of character. The intellectual virtues are scientific knowledge, art, practical wisdom, philosophic wisdom and intuitive reason. Like the moral virtues, these also have an effect on our ability to live ethically, as they shape our understanding of the world, mankind and our own souls. While developing moral virtues gives us the state of character necessary to act virtuously, developing intellectual virtues gives us the scientific, creative, cultural and philosophical knowledge to enable us to act in the right way, at the right times and towards the right people. Scientific knowledge has to do with our understanding of solid, eternal facts about the world we live in and the life forms on it, while an art is concerned with the knowledge of how to make, create and bring into being. Practical wisdom is the capacity to act for good on behalf of human nature, while intuitive reason acts as a conscience to guide us in understanding of right and wrong. Philosophical wisdom combines elements of scientific knowledge and intuitive reason—it is a sure understanding of right and wrong and good and evil, and it aims to discover and understand the universal truths. Together, these intellectual virtues enable a man to deliberate wisely, make good choices, know the truth, and practically live in accordance with his moral virtue.
The ethical life of true contemplative happiness is only possible for the man who has chosen to develop both his intellectual virtue and his moral character, and to live out these virtues through consistent just actions.
The justice of his character is perhaps seen no better than in how he relates to his friends and the types of relationships he forms with those around him. This being the case, Aristotle turns to look at friendship and its position in the virtuous man’s life.
What exactly is friendship? Friendship is a form of love, and to understand its essential qualities we must understand love. Love, and in particular the object of love, seems to be different for each person as “each man loves what is good for himself…but not what is good for him but what seems good”. The human soul loves things that seem useful, pleasant and good. Friends, as objects of love, can be classified accordingly as useful, pleasant or good and the respective friendships also take on these three forms and can be qualified as utilitarian, pleasure seeking, and based on virtue and genuine love of character.
Looking at the types of friendships a man has reveals much about the nature of his character. Utilitarian friendships are formed between “those who love for the sake of utility” and “for the sake of what is good for themselves”. These relationships tend to be transient. They are based on need, and as “the useful is not permanent but always changing”, when the “motive of the friendship is done away, the friendship is dissolved”. Utility-based friendships occur between people who take no joy or pleasure in each other above what gain they will receive from the other.
A friendship based on pleasure is the relationship formed between those who love for “the sake of what is pleasant to themselves”. Though less fleeting than utilitarian friendships, pleasure-seeking persons likewise “quickly become friends and quickly cease to be so”. Established “under the guidance of emotion”, these relationships are based on mutual enjoyment in each others company, rather than genuine love of character. As time passes and tastes change “their friendship changes with the object that is found pleasant, and such pleasure alters quickly.”
Both utilitarian and pleasure-seeking friendships are “only incidental, for it is not as being the man he is that the loved person is loved, but as providing some good or pleasure”. In contrast, a friendship based on love of character is enduring because the object loved, though its usefulness and pleasantness may fade, is loved for its very nature and for the sole quality of being itself. This “truest friendship” is “the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue”. It is a form of love that is possible only between those who live virtuously and have a good moral character, for it is this very goodness of character that each loves in the other. Since “loving seems to be the characteristic virtue of friends” and “goodness is an enduring thing”, the only form of “friendship that endures” is this character-loving friendship.
The ethical man then, full of moral and intellectual virtue, seeks out these good souls who have the “characteristics that friends should have”. He forms enduring relationships with them, for they see and love the goodness of his character just as he sees this same quality in them. Friendship, then, is a kind of crowning jewel of the ethical life. Good friendships fill a man’s life with joy, goodwill, companionship, and enduring love. Without these, an otherwise ethical life is incomplete because “without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods”.
Having contemplated the role of friendships in an ethical life, Aristotle turns to conclude with an examination of pleasures and pains, and a review and confirmation of happiness as the ultimate good.
Pleasures and pains are“intimately connected with our human nature” and cultivating them with wisdom is an integral element of the ethical life. To love what we ought and hate what we ought is perhaps the deepest sense of individual justice, for these feelings reveal the inner man and bring the virtue of the soul into sharp relief in a way that almost nothing else can. To live ethically we must not only do the right things, but truly delight in them even as we are distressed by those that are bad.
In seeking to find pleasure and pain in the right things, we must first understand the nature of these somewhat obscure yet innate qualities. It is thought by many that pleasure is the ultimate good. Aristotle contradicts this theory by explaining that “the pleasant life is more desirable with wisdom than without” and that as “the good cannot become more desirable by the addition of anything else to it”, pleasure cannot be the end goal of human existence. The ultimate good, as has already been evaluated, must be a final and self-sufficient end, complete and fulfilling on it’s own. Pleasure, while a good and an asset to the good life, is not a resilient and long-enduring thing, does not sustain itself, and is not a complete end on it’s own.
What is pleasure then? Pleasure is seen as the quality which completes and elevates activities. It cannot arise on its own, but is dependent on some kind of physical or mental action, for “without activity pleasure does not arise”. One must act or think in some way to experience pleasure, and the “best conditioned” sense, act, or thought “in relation to the finest of it’s objects” results in the highest pleasure. For example, an accomplished pianist will take great pleasure in playing a beautifully tuned instrument, while a person who is not a musician will find little joy in using the instrument as they cannot play it well. In this way “each of the pleasures is bound up with the activity it completes”, and the pleasure is greatest when the activity is performed at its best.
Furthermore, as there are many different kinds of activities, there are many different kinds of pleasures. Each specific action has its own unique form of pleasure, and “an activity is intensified by it’s proper pleasure”. Taking pleasure in an activity prompts us to refine it, spend more time in it, achieve higher skill levels, and be more productive and artistic while engaged in it. It is important to note that this is only true for the activity’s specific attendant pleasure, not pleasure in general. If a pleasure not connected with the activity at hand arises, this “alien pleasure” hinders progress. For example, if someone who loves music is engaged in reading when a favorite song is turned on, if the pleasure of listening to music supersedes the pleasure of reading, the person will most likely not be able to focus well on reading. While activities are heightened and completed by “the attendant pleasure”, they are “hindered by pleasures arising from other sources” which “do pretty much what proper pains do, since activities are destroyed by their proper pains” .
Having evaluated the nature of pleasure, it remains to consider which of the pleasures is proper to the ethical life. The things a man delights in point directly to the state of his soul, and “to enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on virtue of character”. Taking pleasure and pain in the correct activities is the completion and perfection of the virtuous life. What pleasures then, are characteristic of a just soul? As each pleasure follows a specific activity, we can clearly see what a man’s soul delights in by observing his activities.
The ethical man has many activities, for he has many virtues. He is liberal and gives freely. He is courageous and does noble acts for the sake of justice, not in pursuit of glory. He has a good temper, is friendly, maintains a temperate lifestyle and, when he does wrong, he admits of it and repents. All of these noble activities are closely connected with him, yet they are only additions to his life rather than a characterization of it. These actions find their source in the goodness of his character, rather than themselves being the source of his virtue. As such, they cannot be considered the ultimate good activity that is innately proper and fundamental to the ethical life.
The good activity, like the good itself, must meet certain qualifications. It must be self sufficient, desirable only for itself, consistent, and enduring. As the good activity is the action of the good life, it must also line up with the standards of an ethical lifestyle and be pleasant to the virtuous man. As we have seen, the essence of the ethical life is the enduring happiness which results from the cultivation of moral and intellectual virtue. The good action, therefore, must uphold these standards of virtue and provide a foundation for other just acts.
Since happiness has already been determined to be the object and “end of human nature”, it is only natural that contemplative happiness, as an action rather than a disposition, should be considered as the primary activity of the ethical life. Contemplative happiness is entirely self-sufficient, for it is established in the very deepest parts of a soul and is not dependent on anyone or anything other than the man himself. It is also chosen purely for its own goodness, for “nothing arises from it apart from the contemplating”, whereas other actions typically have some end product that brings additional gain. As a sort of constant dwelling upon virtue and beauty, it provides continuous and enduring joy, “for we can contemplate truths more continuously than we can do anything”. The pursuit of this form of reverie upon the truth is also peaceful for the mind and body, and this gentility of spirit and quiet sense of peace is characteristic of the good and happy life. In summary, the act of contemplative happiness “does not lack anything, but is self-sufficient”, offers “pleasures marvelous for their purity and their enduringness”, and is a continuous and pleasant mental activity “in accordance with perfect virtue”. The many other noble actions of life are founded and sourced in this peaceful indwelling contemplative happiness and the goodness of character it cultivates.
Contemplative happiness—the act of dwelling on truth, beauty and goodness—fulfills all the qualifications laid out for the defining action innate to the ethical life. It is the activity of the virtuous soul, and taking pleasure therein is the completion and perfection of the good life.
Humans are intentional beings, and whether we are highly conscience of it or not, each act and thought aims at some good or some final end we hope to achieve. What is that end? Surely, it is happiness. We choose one course of study over another, believing it will better suit our needs and tastes. A thief steals for their own personal benefit, believing that the object of their thievery will bring them good. A child lies, thinking to save themselves from some punishment resultant of the truth being told. In each of these choices, we believe while acting that in some way we will be happier for acting such.
Yet genuine happiness, while it is the universal aim of every action, is not easily achieved. There are many qualities that might be called “happiness”, yet most of them are only a vague shadow of the true joy that the soul seeks and yearns after. This glorious and enduring contentment we long for is available, though nearly impossible to attain. It is inseparable from a deeply virtuous life, and only attainable to those who are committed to evaluating the nature of each of their thoughts and actions and who “strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing [in them]”.
True happiness is self sufficient, desirable in itself, nourishing to the mind and body, enduring, and consistent despite every challenge and circumstance of life. It is the fountain of joy that springs from the goodness of character established through moral and intellectual virtue, the result of the activity of dwelling on goodness and justice. Such is the quintessence of the ethical life—the rich, sustainable joy which any man can seek and attain through the cultivation of a virtuous soul and continual active contemplation of truth, goodness and beauty.
Who can live such a life? Aristotle claims that “such a life would be too high for man; for it is not in so far as he is man that he will live so, but in so far as something divine is present in him”. No human can live a perfectly virtuous life. We all fail, we all make mistakes. How, then, can any man be truly happy?
For those of us in Christ, we have something of the Divine abiding in us. Not in our own human nature, but in the Spirit of the Holy God, who dwells in us and teaches us. In ourselves, we fall short and fail Him so often. Yet even there Christ has covered our sins with His blood and made us pure before the eternal throne of God. While we still sin and our own virtue is spotted, our souls are washed clean by His grace. And perhaps contemplation of His virtue, which is made our virtue before the Father, makes this contemplative happiness accessible to a weary human soul. In acting in accordance with His commands to love others, sacrifice our needs for theirs, and live righteously, we cultivate souls of moral and intellectual virtue. And dwelling on the beauty, grace and truth manifested in His character fills us with the hope, peace, and indescribable joy that defines the ethical life.
“Happiness extends, then, just so far as contemplation does, and those to whom contemplation more fully belongs are more truly happy, not as a mere concomitant but in virtue of the contemplation; for this is in itself precious.”