Aristotle’s Ethics. Lect 1 & 2

Aristotle (384-322 BCE).

Son of a doctor. Sent to Athens at 17. Studies with Plato for a long time, but not chosen to succeed Plato as leader of Plato’s School (Name of Plato’s School: Academy) at Plato’s death. Called to Macedonia to be tutor of the Macedonian king’s son, Alexander, later Alexander the Great. When his student becomes king and begins his conquests, Aristotle returns to Athens. Sets up his own School. Used to walk around while lecturing – hence the name of his School: Peripatetic School. At the same time, Alexander conquers first the Greek cities, also Athens, then Persia and a huge part of the world then known to the Greeks. Sudden death of Alexander in 323. Athens breaks away from Macedonian domination, Aristotle flees. Dies one year later.

Groundbreaking work on pretty much all aspects of the sciences in particular biology, theory of science, psychology, ethics, ontology, metaphysics and logic, rhetoric, literary theory. (The term “metaphysics” is due to the name for Aristotle’s writings on fundamental philosophical questions. Main traits of his philosophizing: Very abstract philosophical discourse. Great systematizer; tries to organize everything he finds into one huge order. Looks at the world as basically ordered by telos: everything behaves or ought to behave in a purposeful way. (Modern thinking is dominated by the idea of causal analysis). His ideas and his world-picture dominated thought and science until the Renaissance, albeit in a Christianized way. We will look at his ideas of soul (philosophical psychology) and how to live a good life (ethics).

What is Ethics?

A body of prescriptions, rules, values and conventions orienting our behavior. Guide us in distinguishing what we ought to do (ethically right) and ought not to do (ethically wrong), good or evil/bad, and how we ought to live. Important for ethics: When do we act freely? What is agency? What are we responsible for? Why should we be moral? What do we achieve when we are moral?

Normative: offering and demanding orientation. But distinct from law, customs and mere social conventions by not being valid through legislation, or merely observed conventions in a given community. Morality: the concrete rules of an existent or historical community or culture. Ethics: What is good? What is the highest good? Most ethics make universal claims: Slavery is unethical. Examples: the Ten Commandments. Aristotle’s excellences like courage, honesty, justice. The idea that we ought to pursue the greatest possible happiness of all in our society. The idea that we only should do what is universally acceptable.

Status today:

No clear notion in everyday life. Blends into morality: Don’t lie! Don’t force others against their will! Help those who need help. Don’t torture. Ethics comes to our minds when we feel unfairly treated or wronged, or see something we disapprove of: That’s not fair! Or: Madoff’s actions were deeply unethical. Ethics in the philosophical sense is not a priority and an everyday concern, at least not in an explicit way. Things are different for people who are religious. Most religions ask their faithful to live by certain rules, and to conduct their lives in specific ways. Think of the Puritans. Their whole life was guided by their religious ethics.

Philosophical ethics tries to determine, through thought, what is right and wrong, good and evil, and to offer models on how we ought to, live and who we ought to be and become. In modern times two dominant ways of thinking about what is morally right and wrong. One school looks for basic rules, moral laws of a comprehensive kind (Universalism). Its paradigmatic version comes from the German philosopher Kant: Act only in such a way that you your wills and policies are acceptable to every rational person as laws for all. The other school starts from the assumption that we primarily act out of self-interest. Each of us pursues his/her own happiness, understood as avoiding pain and gaining pleasure. Regard for others becomes morally relevant to the extent as their happiness is tied in with ours (Utilitarianism). Both schools try to offer to us formulae and procedures that allow us to decide whether an action we are considering is morally good or morally bad. Those who do the right things will lead moral lives.

Aristotelian Ethics

Aristotle neither an ethicist of moral laws, nor a defender of wishes and wants, nor someone who offers us a formula that tells us which actions to do, and which to omit. Founder of a third school: virtue ethics. Virtue ethics, Aristotelian style, urges us to lead a good life, tells us that the good is the pursuit of happiness, and that happiness emerges from the effort to acquire and to practice virtues or excellences. Practicing a virtue we are and become excellent. Not using a virtue on the occasion where it applies diminishes our status of excellence.

What matters most and foremost is that we lead our lives in the right way. Actions and our intentions enter only as ways and means to lead a good life.

What is it ‘to live a good life?’

Seeking happiness by pursuing excellence.

Eudaimonia – Aristotelian Happiness.

I start with a provisional characterization oh Aristotelian happiness. It is neither the satisfaction of all of our wishes and wants, nor social recognition (honor), nor the possession of the means for acquiring what we desire. (Book I, chapter 5). Aristotle’s happiness springs from “an activity of soul in accordance with complete excellence” (NE Reader, p. 374, 1102a1 – not in the recommended readings). A specific kind of pleasure attaches to such an activity. It is the pleasure that comes with activities that pursue excellence. Book I, chapter 8). “Excellent actions are in themselves pleasant” (NE Reader p. 373, 1099a21). There is happiness in the action that is performed in accordance with excellence. But there is also happiness in a life spent in the pursuit of excellence(s). Examples: Let courage be an excellence. To act bravely in a given situation carries with it a specific form of happiness: I have done the best I can do. To seek out a friend who pursues the same kind of happiness I am seeking in my life gives me the specific pleasure of engaging in an activity that is excellent, and that contributes to make me (and the other excellent.) ‘Happiness’ translates “eudaimonia”. The hint we can take from the term: It is to be ‘well-spirited.’

Excellence or Virtue – aretē.

A good life is a life that seeks happiness by pursuing excellence. It is the “state of man which makes a man good and makes him do his own work well.” (NE Reader p. 382, 1106a22). ‘Excellence’ translates “aretē.” “Virtue” is another translation. We think of virtues as being prescriptive qualities: a virtuous woman, very much in the tradition of modern moral thinking: one is virtuous only if one obeys certain prescriptions and abstains from certain actions. Virtues are moral prescriptions. This is not how Aristotle thinks about excellences. In the first place, everything that has a purpose is something that can be evaluated under the aspect of excellence or virtue.

Living beings and artifacts – houses and knives - have virtue. The aretē of a house is to be a good house, i.e. something that offers good shelter in a durable way as distinguished from offering bad shelter and being haywire. Excellence is here concerned with the evaluation of the item from the point of view of how well it fulfills that purpose. Excellence is graded: things can be better or less good, concerning the excellence of fulfilling a certain function. Excellence, in general, is to be able to be evaluated as better or worse, always with respect to its function. The good knife cuts well, does not blunt easily, resists quick rusting etc.

For living beings in general, excellence is related to their internal purpose or finality. Plants, animals will be more or less good exemplars of their kind. The form that is active in shaping them and drives their comportment is directed at making each one of them be the most perfect exemplar of its kind, in all of the relevant respects: a powerful tree, that resists atmospheric challenges, getting into the best exemplar circumscribed by their potential. The ideal form – recall the little oak tree – manifests the excellence of the thing. But form is not everything. For the tree, function needs to be added: a powerful tree. Human beings share in this purpose of aiming at the best possible exemplar they can become, both in body and soul.

Zooming in on ethical excellence. Human excellence is attached to that faculty of the soul that is specifically human: reason. It “is distinguished into two kinds: intellectual and moral (NE Reader p. 375, 1103a4 and NE p. 376, 1103a17). Moral excellence, which interests us here, consists in the better or not so good conduct of soul faculties, where what counts as ‘good’ is determined by reason, and where I act for the sake of that good. Excellences are states, i.e. conditions of our soul due to actions we have taken and attitudes we have acquired by choosing to realize our rational potential as fully as possible. Typical excellences or virtues are courage, truthfulness, practical wisdom or prudence, justice. Friendship is an atypical excellence. Excellences exist in us by nature, but at first only as potential: “we are adapted by nature to receive them” (NE Reader p. 376, 1103a24). They are there, but do not develop by themselves: “none of the moral excellences arises in us by nature” (NE Reader p. 376, 1103a19. My italics).

Acquiring Excellence:

How do we get those excellences, first only dormant in us? We first get them by exercising them (NE Reader p. 376, 1103a30). Part of Aristotle’s ‘good life’ is therefore that we learn what our excellences are and how to pursue them by doing, more precisely: by acting in accordance with them. Important: This is not just learning something, in order to be able, later, to do the right thing. Acquiring excellences is itself already an integral part of leading the right, i.e. the ‘good’ life. In other words: you need not be truthful, brave of just in order to be moral. It may well be the case that you have not mastered the subtleties of an excellence, and are therefore as yet unable to practice the excellence in an adequate way. But that does not matter. What is required is that you work at acquiring the excellence. “By doing the acts that we do in presence of danger, we become brave” (NE Reader p. 377, 1103b16).

We will all agree that learning to do the right thing is important and laudable. But not all of us will agree that working at learning is an integral part of being moral. For the first time we see that Aristotle is not primarily looking at us being moral throughout, on every occasion, and according to precise and strict criteria for courage or honesty. What primarily matters is that we build the right kind of character. Ethos is character and habit. Ethics is concerned with character and habit. Character is a disposition to behave in certain ways, be it as a sincere person, be it as an insincere person. Excellences – states of our souls, arise from activities, and are ‘actualized’ in activities. Activity is decisive also once we have acquired the excellence. No excellence is definitely acquired!

Habit

We need to distinguish learning, acquisition and practice on the basis of having the experience of an excellence. So far we have mentioned acquisition of an excellence. How do we let ourselves be guided by excellences once we have learned them? (NE Reader p. 376, 1103a31) Big difference between the excellence of a knife and the excellence of courage, justice, temperance, truthfulness, friendship or practical wisdom. Once the knife has its excellence, that excellence does not vanish by itself. (It does diminish through use.) The opposite holds for moral excellences of the human animal. Our moral excellences, however, are states/dispositions that fade, vanish or even transmute into their extremes when they are not practiced. Reasons for this: (1) there is always some resistance to be overcome against the choice and the implementation of the right kind of conduct, (2) there also is the necessity to constantly redefine the excellence in different circumstances. Most importantly: (3) the habit and the habitus weaken and fade unless practiced. We slowly lose the moral sensibility we have acquired through practice. The virtuoso musician. (So, when Aristotle says: “Being habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave or cowardly,” . . . “states arise out of like activities” (NE Reader p. 377, 1103b16 & 1103 20) he is not just pointing to learning.

Attitudes, background for action: The agent who pursues excellence “must also be in a certain condition when he does them [i.e. the actions]; in the first place he must have knowledge, secondly he must choose the acts, and choose them for their own sakes, and thirdly, his action must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character” (NE Reader p. 380, 1105a30). Aristotle is articulating a thesis about what it is to have or to be in the state of courage or justice, or in the relation of friendship. We are in the state only insofar as we practice it, or are prepared to practice the excellence when its occasion arises. We do not have it, or diminish its being in us, when we do not enact the excellence. We are not a friend when, in situation where friendship would demand that we behave as a friend (‘in accordance with friendship’) we do nothing or even betray the one we call ‘our friend.’ Of course, we can fail here or there, thereby just worsening our status ‘state’) as a friend. But we cannot systematically or on crucial occasions fail to act in accordance with friendship, without annulling that status. In general: for excellences, being depends on doing. Being is a form of becoming. Or better: we are constantly in the state of becoming brave, perhaps also ‘more courageous’ or of ‘becoming friends’ or good or better friends.

And the other way round: every case where there is an occasion for practicing a moral excellence, but we do not do so, diminishes the excellence and contributes to a state of vice. The process and practice has priority. The state of excellence is dependent on practice. And, as the ‘good life’ consists of having excellences, the good life is no more and no less than the practice of excellences – in the manner of choices that aim at the intermediate. That said, the more we build habit, the more it feeds back into future practice. A self-reinforcing activity and self-weakening inactivity.

Reason and Choice:

What is the role of reason in the practice of excellences? Excellences are ‘states.’ These are “things in virtue of which we stand well or badly with reference to the passions” (NE Reader p. 381, 1105b25). These are not states in the same sense in which a substance is in liquid or gaseous state. Aristotle’s states are dispositions: to be ready to behave in a certain way when the conditions arise that put this state into action. Flammability is a state in that sense. The state of excellences is our disposition to behave in certain ways when a passion pushes us in a certain direction. (Alcibiades!). When do we ‘stand badly with reference to a passion or, for with reference to a desire or appetite? We do, when we let ourselves be overwhelmed by a passion, or driven by a desire. A fine line separates ‘allowing to oneself one’s feelings’ and ‘being overwhelmed by one’s feelings.’ To let ourselves be overwhelmed, or simply to be overwhelmed – out of control from anger, driven to self-abandonment and destruction by passion, (“Fatal Attraction”), too fearful to take the right action against a danger, exploiting a friend out of greed – where this happens we “stand badly with reference to the passion.” Why? Is it because the passion might lead us to do stupid things and damage ourselves? No. Is it because we ought to say no to our passions and desires, perhaps because they propose immoral conduct to us? ‘No’ again. Aristotle’s reason is that the right and good order between the different faculties of the soul is out of sync if we let ourselves be steered blindly by our passions. In us, the ‘higher’ faculty of practical reason must control and fashion the lower faculties. That control and fashioning is lost when we are overwhelmed or, as kids, still steered by our desires and feelings entirely. We miss out on our specifically human potential, when we do not practice the excellences. All of them are anchored in our rational soul, and their practice requires practical reason.

Why privilege virtues like courage, moderation, justice, and friendship over fear, wanting everything right now, or pursuing one’s self-interest at the expense of others, or living in splendid solitude? Because, the passions or felt dispositions cause us to act without choice. When we let that happen, we abandon ourselves and stop being masters of ourselves. They have chosen for us when they put pressure on us to enact them: to act out of anger or passion alone, to act to satisfy our desire just because that desire wants it so. From Aristotle’s point of view the question is: who is the master? Is it you, or is it your passion? Is it you, or is it your desires? The good life, the ‘moral’ life is a life of mastery. We need to master our passions. But we also need to be masters of ourselves. We are masters of ourselves where we make rational choices. “In respect to the excellences and the vices we are said not to be moved but to be disposed in a particular way” (NE Reader p. 381, 1106a5).

Aren’t our feelings as dignified a part of us as our reason? Why not declare that our feelings, passions, desires and appetites do not overwhelm us, because they are ‘us’, at least as much as our reason. Who would that ‘us’ be, in the first place? We are our feelings, and we do not lose mastery when we give in to them. In that case we are the masters through that part of us that belongs to our affective faculties. The question is not, whether our affects or we are the masters. The problem rather is: Shall we let ourselves be ruled by our reason or by our feelings. What would Aristotle reply? He might argue that the rational and the irrational elements of our soul are not at the same level, and therefore are not equal players in a game where either the one or the other dominates us. Of course, all the elements have their own excellences, the irrational elements as well as the rational ones (NE p. 374, 1102b3). The decisive difference between the rational and the irrational elements in our soul: the irrational faculties come without choice, whereas the rational elements enable, even demand choice. In choice, it is not just reason that chooses. We choose through reason. Reason alone does not determine what we are to do (but: contemplative excellence). Aristotle does not operate with the dichotomy ‘reason vs. passion’. We moderns do. His alternative is: activity of the soul under (some) choice vs. activity of the soul without choice. In some cases, reason “persuades the irrational element by giving advice or exhortation.” (From “On the Soul”).

Choice and Deliberation:

What is choice in a matter where excellence is at stake? Let us assume that I am a freshman at UCI, start Core, and realize that the instructor has chosen to teach Aristotle. I do not understand a word of this philosophy. I begin to fear that Core will mess up the stellar GPA I want to achieve at UCI. That fear proposes to me that I drop the course. Now, following Aristotle, if I just let my fear dictate my behavior, I stand badly with reference to my pathos. Fear, as we know, will predominantly tell me to avoid the danger, which is the object of my fear. If there is an excellence to be pursued, here, it is courage. Now, is courage just to stay on and ignore the fear? A certain kind of rationality might suggest that to me: I need the course; better to get it behind; I will somehow muddle through; perhaps things will not be as bad as they now appear. But, if I come down at the side of reason like this, I have not performed a proper moral choice. I have done nothing that “makes a man good and makes me perform my work well” (NE p. 382, 1106a22). I have done nothing to acquire the excellence of courage. I have not been building character, more precisely: the character trait of courage.

The Intermediate:

Excellence or virtue involves choice, and that choice “must have the quality of aiming at an intermediate” (NE p. 382, 1106b15) between extremes. Aristotle’s key formula:

“Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it. Now it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess, and that which depends on defect” (NE Reader p. 383, 1107a1).

How does this work? Let us try to unpack the formula. In our example, the excellence is courage. Our choice is twofold: It is, on the one hand, the choice of courage as opposed to the extremes, whatever they may be. It is, on the other hand, the choice of that action which a better or worse enactment of courage. Let me wanting to be brave. Do I then know what I ought to do? No way! “Matters concerning conduct and questions of what is good for us – here: what counts as the right courageous conduct have no fixity . . . account of the particular case is yet more lacking in exactness” (EN Reader p. 377, 1104a4-6) How come, courage does not come with a list of descriptions that align situations and the actions to be taken: In case of . . . you will be brave if you . . .? The reason is that there are two many different factors to be considered for a general policy recommendation to be able to be on target. That target is the excellence of courage! The same holds for friendship. Aristotle does not tell us what to do in order to be a perfect friend. He does offer us orientation: friends help each other. Unconditionally? No, help as requested by our addict friend may be disastrous for the friend. We need to deliberate and use practical wisdom at all times!

But how do these intermediaries help me in my difficulty to opt in favor of courage and to conceive of the right action in my situation of the difficult Core course? First: the extremes. Abstractly, if courage is the mean as the right response to fear, then cowardice is ‘not enough courage’, i.e. the defect of courage, for it is the state of the soul of someone who lets him-/herself be controlled by fear. (The coal on the bridge in the Fairy Tale?). But in that same dimension - confronting a threatening situation - there is another extreme. It is that of ignoring the danger and the difficulty, or of rushing into the danger, reckless audaciousness (compare NE Reader p. 384. 1107a32-1107b2). This misses out on courage by excessive disregard for the danger and, I would say, for what talks to me in terms of my fear: you may not be successful in that course.

Following Aristotle, I have decided to be brave and to choose an intermediate course of action between cowardice and disregard for my fear. But you can form an intermediate only if you know the extremes. Cowardice, insensitivity to danger (Grimm’s fairy tale: “The Young Man Who Went Out in Search of Fear”) do not tell me what kind of action counts as one or the other vice. But “excellence both finds and chooses that which is intermediate” (NE p. 383, 1107a5). But now I have a grid, and a continuum of positions between the two poles of cowardice and audaciousness, and I can try to compare different scenarios and actions as to where they put me in that continuum. Why should it be cowardly to back off? It would perhaps be cowardly if I simply drop, without weighing my chances of success. What of the idea of muddling through, or just closing my eyes and stay on? That looks like pure disregard of the danger. Did I weigh the danger concretely enough? What are my chances of succeeding? If I know perfectly well that Aristotle and I will be eternally without mutual understanding, then I perhaps better listen to my fear. It tells me what my reason also tells me: this won’t work. On the other hand: What if I am prepared to put in some extra work? That might diminish the chances of failure. But is the course worth the effort? And there still remains a risk I will not make it, or not do well. Personally, I think that if we should also enter another excellence into the equation: healthy pride, as a rational motive to pull through rather that out!

All this is called practical deliberation. The extremes and the idea of an intermediate are just helps in making up one’s mind in a rational way. I take fear seriously, but only if it can gain approval by reason. Note that I have done two things simultaneously in that deliberation: I have worked out what courage means for me in my situation. The intermediate is always “relative to us” (NE Reader p. 382, 1106b5). Another person, or a slight change in the situation might led to a different conclusion about what courage means under the different circumstances. And I have determined what my specific courageous action will be. I have chosen this course of action as the intermediate one, avoiding cowardice and insensitivity or audaciousness. In other words: I have enriched my experience of courage by the case, ready, perhaps, to respond similarly in similar cases, or to argue significant difference in a new deliberation.

I have tried to demonstrate to you the openness of Aristotle’s practical rationality, but also the habit-building and character-building nature of his procedure in the pursuit of excellence. It is also a dealing with attitudes that deviate from the excellence such as fear, and will fashioning, character building, quality for me; for I have led my fear to be felt “at the right time, with reference to the right object, towards the right people (me!), with the right aim, and in the right way.” (NE Reader p. 383, 1106b20.)

Why be good by pursuing excellences? What makes excellences good?

What if someone said: why pursue excellences in my life, why not the vices? Why be truthful rather that insincere? Why try to match the status one enjoys with the justification for that status? Why not rather choose the pursuit of wealth or of pleasure as main orientation of my life, and subordinate other pursuits to this central purpose? What is the argument for the claim that such a person does not lead a good life? What if he says, that he is living his idea of the right kind of life?

And a question of a second order: What makes the excellences/virtues good, and the vices bad? Let us look at Aristotle’s rejection of a moneymaking life first. (NE Reader p. 367, 1096a5-10). Where the acquisition of wealth is the dominant project in a life, Aristotle says, there that life is undertaken under a compulsion. We may wonder where the compulsion is when the life of money is a fundamental choice of an agent. (Disney’s Uncle Scrooge McDuck!). But Aristotle really argues that the compulsion lies elsewhere. Wealth is not a goal in itself. It is only a means for something else. From our point of view this is probably a normative statement: that is what the interest in wealth should be, for example to allow a life of leisure that can be spent in contemplation. In Uncle Scrooge, money has obviously become a goal in itself, a goal where possession and augmentation confer pleasure. A true scrooge reverses this instrumental relation. For him money becomes a goal in itself. From Aristotle’s point of view that is an aberration. Wealth is not a primary good, like health, something we pursue (also) for its own sake. It is not rational to desire wealth for its own sake. Wealth should be no more than a means to an end different from wealth itself. If that is the case, then a life that puts the highest value on wealth puts itself under the constraint of the things wealth can procure. Wealth is a conditional good. It is “merely useful and for the sake of something else.” (NE Reader p. 367, 1196a6).

A problem Aristotle does not address at this place: money can buy goods that are worth for their own sake, like health or a life of contemplation. Money, as it functions in our environment, is the generalized access to very different kinds of good. Does that make it worth one’s while to pursue it for its own sake? I do not think so.

How about a different pursuit, the pursuit of pleasure? We are now asking whether such a life is not a good life too. Or perhaps the only good life. Aristotle is again very short in his rejection: For Aristotle, a life of pleasure – understood as a life of enjoyment (NE Reader p. 366, 1095b17) – is a preference for a life suitable to beasts. Aristotle seems to presuppose that practical reason aims at seizing certain potentials we have, i.e. ‘excellences’. We begin to get a clearer notion why only his excellences are good, and are the only real good things for the pursuit of the good life. Pleasures may be something we pursue for their own sake. That would, by the way, include the more beastly ones and the more refined ones. But to be truthful or courageous or just or a friend to a friend is not per se pleasurable, and in many cases unpleasurable in the sense of fulfilling wishes and desires or material interests. If pleasure is the ultimate measure for the good life, then these other excellences will not be chosen. Aristotle could think like this: the pursuit of pleasure carries with it a special and peculiar kind of dependence. I may be able to fashion my pleasures, at least to some extent. But even if I were their master in that respect, once they are in place, I will be the slave of my pleasures. I do not choose my pleasure and what provides them, in the same way in which I choose to be truthful, brave or just or a friend. The interest in pleasure always manifests itself in form of a desire. And desires motivate to go after their object. In cases of courage, truthfulness of justice we are the masters of both the decision to let our life be guided by the virtue and to choose it as guide in a given case, and we determine the object of the excellence in this case. Our mastery coincides with our choice of the excellence. That choice enables us to be masters in the application of the virtue, and to be masters of ourselves in dealing with the resistances.

What do we take away from the two negative cases for our question why the excellences designated by Aristotle are good? First, unlike wealth, these excellences are not goods because they are means towards something else. Excellences are chosen for their own sake and for the sake of no other good (NE Reader p. 369/370, 1097a30-36). Why is truthfulness good? Because we choose it for its own sake only, and not also for the sake of anything else. This is of course not an argument! It is just saying the same thing in the answer and in the question. We are only explicating the goodness of the excellences, not giving an independent ground for their goodness. In other words: the question what makes excellences good and vices bad does not receive an independent answer, an answer that provides a reason beyond of what the excellences are. You may be a little disappointed. Does the philosopher have nothing more to offer for his ethics than an explication of what we mean when we look for a ‘highest good’ what we mean, he says, is a good that is good only for its own sake. But, then, Aristotle thinks that reason is here at both sides: at the side of the object and at the side of the inquiry into the object. The objects are the excellences. Reason has gains insight into itself, and its unconditional character when it finds that the excellences are autotelic goods. To articulate the highest goods is self-elucidation of reason. Not self-grounding! To act under the guidance of the highest goods is self-realization of reason.

Eudaimonia – Aristotelian Happiness

I return to happiness before we turn to the specific virtue of friendship. Aristotle starts his NE with the form of the highest good, and works his way to the idea of choice and of the intermediate. We have worked our way from choice, back to the highest good and goods. Unlike wealth and money excellences are goods we choose for their own sake. They are reason’s own tendency to become real and to fashion our lives, simultaneously goods we need to make real by choosing them and by choosing under their guidance. Is there something that unites all the excellences without being a further purpose to which they all are means? Pleasure and enjoyment do not qualify, in spite of the fact that we also seek pleasure for its own sake (EN Reader p. 368, 1096b18). However refined, pleasure will always be connected to the senses: sensuous pleasure, and the happiness based on pleasure will not be shared by excellences.

Is there something all the excellences share? (NE Reader p. 368, 1096b21-25). Aristotle thinks there is such a common feature. And it is, again, happiness, but a happiness of a specific kind. I quickly introduced it at the beginning. Aristotle calls it “eudaimonia:” ‘to be be-spirited in the good way.’ Let us call it ‘moral happiness’ in order to distinguish it from ‘sensuous happiness.’ What kind of a feeling is ‘moral happiness? Aristotle calls it complete (NE Reader p. 369, 1097a31) and self-sufficient (NE Reader p. 370, 1097b7 & 15). The completeness is the lack of dependence of the excellences on other things justifying them, the fact that they are highest goods, not just pursued for the sake of some other good. Self-sufficiency is “that which when isolated makes life desirable and lacking in nothing.” (NE Reader p. 370, 1097b15). This is close to what I have called ‘self-mastery’ earlier, or includes self-mastery. Moral happiness also seems to be a feeling of plenitude. Of having or pursuing something that makes one’s life worthwhile living: a good life. Living a life that seeks to enact excellences thus confers a feeling of completeness and self-sufficiency. Aristotle thinks that this is the purpose of man: “the kind of life” that consists in “an activity or actions of the soul” implying a rational principle” (choice of the intermediate between extremes), and the purpose of a good human being to be the good and noble performance of these, and . . .any action is well performed when it is performed in accordance with . . . the best and most complete excellence,” “and that ‘in a complete life’” (NE Reader p. 371, 1098 a12-20, citation modified). A (morally) happy man lives and fares well” (NR p. 372, 1098b20). His life is “in itself pleasant.” (NE p. 373, 1099a5), whether he enjoys what he is doing or does not, also because he does well what his most precious and dignified purpose is: to use reason.