Aristotle and the Good Life #2
This post will be centered around Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle.
The definition of ethics for Aristotle was the study of how humans can live a good and fulfilling life, achieving the desired end goal of eudaimonia. This leads us to ask, what exactly does it mean for something to be good? Luckily, Aristotle answers what he terms to be good in the first line of Ethics.
“Every art and every scientific inquiry, and similarly every action and purpose, may be said to aim at some good. Hence the good has been well defined as that which all things aim”
This deceptively simple opening states that any intention or action we perform has an inherent form of goodness to it. Evaluating this statement at first glance is quite scary because it gives agency and even value to anything that we could possibly do. Essentially, because any aim or objective has a form of goodness to it, it is justified and even rational. But if everything is good, and there is no relative contrast, then our life is directionless and without meaning because no one action can take precedence over something else. Consequently, we must identify the means as to why we do something.
The key insight is identifying that many of the tasks and goals we pursue are merely instrumental — they are desired not for their own sake, but as a means to something else. For example, we do not make money for its own sake. We make it for the ability to purchase leisurely items or to have it provide security. Similarly, no one exercises for the sake of doing the exercise itself; they do it for the health benefits or the improved aesthetics. However, this line of reasoning raises a philosophical problem known as an infinite regress: if every goal leads to another, and there is no final goal, then our actions lack purpose. Life would become an endless chain of means without an end, leaving us with no stable foundation for understanding how we ought to live.
Aristotle addresses this problem through a teleological view of nature — the idea that all things have an inherent purpose or end (telos). He argues that there must be an end, something that is desired for its own sake and not as a means to anything further. This, he claims, is eudaimonia, a Greek term that commonly translates to “happiness” but includes connotations of flourishing and success. This happiness is not to be confused with the impermanent sense of happiness you get when you get to go home on the weekends or eat something tasty. This happiness reflects Aristotle’s definition of ethics: that as an individual, you engaged thoroughly and diligently with your life and acted in accordance with how to live a good life.
But this raises a question: what exactly does eudaimonia look like in practice? How do we know when we're truly flourishing rather than just experiencing temporary pleasures or satisfactions? How can we say that we are aiming at a goal for the finality of the goal and not as an instrumental good? To answer this, Aristotle develops the "function argument." We know that the function of a knife is to cut, or the function of a cup is to hold water. These functions are exclusive to those respective objects. According to Aristotle and his empirical observations, what separates humans from plants and animals is our capacity for rational activity—not just intelligence in the abstract, but the ability to deliberate, choose, and act according to reasoned principles over time. The absolute good therefore is human activity that exercises our ability to be rational.
Having traced Aristotle's reasoning from his opening claim to this conclusion, we can now step back and examine the architecture of his argument.
Before I begin talking about how this ancient wisdom might be applicable to us. I’d like for us to take a bird’s-eye view of the framework that Aristotle has laid out. In his argument, he establishes what the “good” is. It is what all things aim at. From there, he declares that there is a hierarchy of good, and there must exist a final good, a good which is sought after for its own sake and nothing else. He then ascribes a term which he defines eudaimonia to this final good and provides an argument saying our rationality is exclusive to us, so using our rationality to be deliberate with our thoughts and actions determines us living a good life. As a reader, it is a good exercise to see how Aristotle constructs his arguments. He establishes his own definitions. He builds a series of logic. He injects his own assumptions. Consider how Aristotle would have advanced his argument if his empirical observations about the world were wrong and humans weren’t “rational”? Or, with the infinite regression problem assume he didn’t take a teleological stance that there had to be an inherent purpose? These questions are just food for thought, but they should give you some insight for deciding the validity of arguments in general.
Why this matters today?
Aristotle’s ancient analysis gives us a template for analyzing our modern dissatisfaction. It’s easy for us to become invested in these instrumental goods i.e. wealth, prestige, fame. As a result, we experience the restlessness of pursuing goals without completely understanding what our desired end state is. Aristotle’s philosophy helps us combat this by providing us with a rigorous diagnostic tool. Because we are rational, we have the capability to examine ourselves and ensure whether our decisions and actions do align with our conceptions of a good life. The path to eudaimonia isn't about rejecting all instrumental goods—we still need money, recognition, and pleasure. All these subcomponents contribute to the desired end state of a happy and fulfilled life. We just can’t become myopic to the point where any one good which isn’t the final good clouds our ability to see the larger pattern of flourishing which we’re ultimately aiming for.
“We may safely then define a happy man as one whose activity accords with perfect virtue and who is adequately furnished with external goods, not for a casual period of time but for a complete or perfect lifetime.”
This is quite a daunting definition to be happy. Not only do we need to be morally excellent and exercise our rationality, but we must also sustain this behavior for an entire lifetime. Yet, in the same vein, this definition is liberating because it tells us that we have a lifetime to become happy. No one bad decision, external factor, or misidentified instrumental good defines us. In an age where everything is moving so fast and it’s difficult to get your bearing on what you should be doing, Aristotle asks us to look at the larger picture. He asks us to be patient and to take an integrated approach to living well, understanding that flourishing is something that we can continuously create through deliberate use of our human capacity for rationality.