Aristotle’s Philosophy of Happiness and Meaning

EUDAIMONIA, VIRTUE ETHICS, AND THE GOLDEN MEAN

Aristotle

• “The Philosopher”: One of the great thinkers of Western Civilization
• Student of Plato, teacher of Alexander the Great
• Science, philosophy, and the intersection between the two

​

​

Nicomachean Ethics

• What is the purpose of human existence?
• What is a life well-lived?
• How do humans achieve happiness?
• What must we do to flourish?

​

• Ethics deals with the questions surrounding how the individual can best live a good life
• Connected to his other work, Politics, which deals with the question of how a community should best live together

Hierarchical View of Nature

• Man is the “rational animal”: Reason is what makes us human.
• Our greatest function is the exercise of reason. We fulfill our potential when we exercise our reason most excellently.
• “Essentialist” view of existence

Eudaimonia

• What is our current understanding of this word?

​

• Does our cultural definition of “happiness” really cover it?

​

​

Eudaimonia

• “Human flourishing”
• A life-well lived
• Not just happiness in the temporary fleeting sense of physical sensation or emotional highs
• The final end goal of life: Have you cultivated yourself to the fullest?

​

​

Eudaimonia: “The Deathbed Question”

• When you look back on your life at the end of it, will you feel content in all that you have done and who you have become?

​

​

​

Eudaimonia

• Eudaimonia is not just about the emotion of pleasure, but rather about the deeper sense of contentment you feel when you have cultivated your own humanity, your own moral character, your own “best self”
• We must develop our character so that the pursuit of flourishing is habitual

​

​

Eudaimonia

• “The happy life is thought to be one of excellence; now an excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement. If Eudaimonia, or happiness, is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence; and this will be that of the best thing in us.” –Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

Cultivation of Virtue

​

• Because humans have the faculty of reason, we must exercise it to achieve the highest good and establish our character
• Moral character is cultivated by acting in accordance with moral virtue
• Virtue (according to Aristotle): A disposition to behave in the right manner in any given situation as a mean between excess and deficiency

​

​

​

Cultivation of Virtue

• Our character is not just our actions, but also our attitudes toward those actions

​

• Virtues are tied to feelings, and feelings to pleasure and pain

​

• Virtue is responding in an appropriate way to the pleasures and the pains and that which life throws at you.

​

• We must not give in to vice, but rather exercise the “Golden Mean” (virtue)

​

The Golden Mean

• The Golden Mean: avoids excess and deficiency
• Excess and deficiency are “Vices”; Virtue is the balance between the two
• Similar to Buddha’s Middle Path, but with slightly different goals (enlightenment v. happiness)
• See last page of reading:
• VIRTUES AND VICES

​

​

Eudaimonia is relative to the individual….

“As we each must find our own route to what the Ancient calls the highest good of self-realization, we also have to choose our own paths to the complete good of using our knowledge, skills, and wisdom to the benefit of our communities, workplaces, nations, and, perhaps, even to humanity.”

-James O’Toole, author of Creating the Good Life: Applying Aristotle’s Wisdom to Find Meaning and Happiness

Eudaimonia as the goal

​

• As long as we pursue virtue and improvement of the soul, we can preserve our happiness even in dark times
• REQUIRES (for Aristotle)
• Intellectual contemplation (reasoned reflection)
• Friendship (relationships based in virtue—true caring rather than selfish motivations for relationships)
• Balance between passion and indifference
• Moral character/virtue