ipl-logo

Nichomachean Ethics By Aristotle

1784 Words8 Pages

Aristotle understands happiness to be the central purpose of human life and a goal in itself, which we should strive for. However, for Aristotle, happiness depends on the cultivation of virtue. In order to live a happy life, one must fulfill a wide variety of conditions. In Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle pursues an answer to the question of “What is the ultimate purpose of human existence?” He wants to find out what the ultimate end goal is, for which we should direct all of our activities. He states that we can see people who pursue pleasure, honor and wealth, but none of these pursuits can be considered a the ultimate good or end goal, for which human beings should strive towards. Aristotle attempts to discover this human good, or that which …show more content…

For instance, one is considered to be “happy” when one is out having fun with friends. However, for Aristotle, happiness is neither subjective nor a state of mind. Happiness cannot be gained or lost in a short amount of time, as pleasurable sensations can be. Happiness is the ultimate value of one’s life, up to that particular moment. It measures how well one has lived up to their potential as a human being. Similar to how we cannot claim that a football game was a “good game” until the end, we cannot truly make any judgments on whether one has lived a happy life until the end of it. This is why Aristotle claims that children cannot be happy, for their potential has not yet been realized. Aristotle says, "for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy" (NE, 1098a18). Happiness is a goal, not a temporary state. While this might then be remedied if one were to translate “eudaimonia” as “flourishing”, we would then understand eudaimonia as more of a process, instead of an end goal. This would require one to rework the entire logic of whether there exists a function of human beings and what the ultimate pursuit in life should be. It seems that as long as one understands “eudaimonia” as “happiness”, not in a temporary state of mind but as “the entirety of one’s life filled with happiness”, then Aristotle’s logic follows much more smoothly.
Additionally, there seems to be a criticism regarding Aristotle’s conception of ergon, or function, seems reductive of a human being’s worth. Aristotle

Show More
Related
313 Words | 2 Pages

To do this I must first explain several concepts of Aristotle which are: (1) how he concludes that the human function is reason, (2) what he means by happiness and how it is the human good, and (3) why he believes that the activity of the soul must be virtuous to become

Read More
715 Words | 3 Pages

Andrew Goodman, an American activist and social worker, once said, “The road to freedom must be uphill even if it is arduous and frustrating.” During the 1900s, there was a war in America. It was not a war for power or territory; it was a war for equal rights, and Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney paid for this war with their lives. Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were both Jewish men who wanted to prevent another Holocaust from happening. They had already lost their family during World War II; they could not stand the thought of losing more people to pointless violence.

Read More
1217 Words | 5 Pages

When it comes to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, I believe that he has found a common thread in humanity in the fact that humans strive for the moderate in living virtuously. However, I would argue that the thread is varied enough to have no true worth in discerning the aspects of humanity. People have too different moralities and goals. Because Aristotle allows for these “local variations”, as Martha Nussbaum later terms in her defense of Aristotle, he is acknowledging that there cannot be an overarching analysis of humanity.

Read More
1210 Words | 5 Pages

Thus, when human function is done well, it is in accordance with virtue and best human life is achieved. In addition, it can be inferred that since Aristotle’s definition of happiness is to be virtuous, performing rational activity well can lead to happiness. In addition, Aristotle states, “if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete” (1098a18). This means that eventually there will be one virtue that is inclusive of all virtue and that displays an end, and this virtue will be in line with the self-sufficient and inclusive concept of happiness as the chief good. If this inclusive virtue and good is achieved, ultimate happiness will be achieved as well.

Read More
674 Words | 3 Pages

Happiness, or eudaimonia, according to Aristotle, is defined simply as human flourishing. The act of flourishing

Read More
1892 Words | 8 Pages

In Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle brings up the idea that in order to discover the human good we must first develop a certain understanding and identify the function of a human being. Aristotle’s function argument is brought up through his belief that the human function is rational activity, meaning that our good as human beings is rational activity performed fine because this is what leads to living well. The good Aristotle tries to get across can be seen in many different forms depending on how it is viewed, because of the idea that the main function of anything is to reach a final end, the final end is considered the good. “The end of medicine is health, that of shipbuilding, a ship, that of military science, victory…” (Nicomachean,

Read More
1082 Words | 5 Pages

Aristotle, on the other hand, had a much more positive outlook on the applicability of his political theory. In many ways, his ideal ideology would look much like Plato’s, although with a more guided and empirical approach. Aristotle, like Plato, argued that the state was not only necessary, but essential to the happiness of its people, because the state was the only means by which the city could achieve happiness. According to Aristotle, “the best good is apparently something complete” and likewise, that “happiness more than anything else seems complete without qualification” (Nicomachean Ethics, 205) and “everyone aims at living well and at happiness” (Politics, 315). Furthermore, he argued that “happiness is an activity of the soul expressing

Read More
483 Words | 2 Pages

Eudemonia is a Greek word for happiness the supreme goal of human life. Aristotle believed that everything has a purpose - the good for a knife is to cut, and a good knife is one that cuts well. In the same way, Eudemonia is the 'good ' for a person. Aristotle made a distinction between subordinate aims and superior aims. Subordinate aims are small ambition whereas, superior aims are what would allow you to eudemonia

Read More
827 Words | 4 Pages

According to Aristotle, an individual can achieve happiness only by realizing all the works and activities in accordance with reason throughout his lifetime. He claimed that happiness consists in cultivating and exercising virtue and it is the ultimate purpose of human existence, as stated in his work Nicomachean Ethics “He is happy who lives in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life”. However, such Aristotelian concept of happiness inevitably contradicts the understanding of history as development which maintains that fulfilling the work of human exceeds the limits of an individual and thus can only be achieved in the course of history. Three

Read More
1819 Words | 8 Pages

“Every skill and every inquiry, and similarly every action and rational choice, is thought to aim at some good; and so the good has been aptly described as that which everything aims. But it is clear that there is some difference between ends: some ends are activities, while others are products which are additional to the activities. In cases where there are ends additional to the actions, the products are by their nature better than activities.” (Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, as translated by Crisp, 2000, p. #3) Aristotle was the first philosopher who wrote a book on ethics titled, Nichomachean Ethics.

Read More
1087 Words | 5 Pages

In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the concept of happiness is introduced as the ultimate good one can achieve in life as well as the ultimate goal of human existence. As Aristotle goes on to further define happiness, one can see that his concept is much different from the 21st-century view. Aristotelian happiness can be achieved through choosing to live the contemplative life, which would naturally encompass moralistic virtue. This differs significantly from the modern view of happiness, which is heavily reliant on material goods. To a person in the 21st-century, happiness is simply an emotional byproduct one experiences as a result of acquiring material goods.

Read More
1413 Words | 6 Pages

Many classical philosophers have given their voice to the nature of human life and what entails its climax. The very nature of human beings has been investigated, broadly, to establish a comprehensive understanding often pegged on morality. Yet, such thoughts have prompted diverse viewpoints with accompanying grounds or reasons. Happiness is an unending topic of discussion in philosophy. This paper explores the similarities and differences in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism to coin a position in whether or not happiness is the ultimate end that human society aspires to acquire.

Read More
459 Words | 2 Pages

Many philosophers, notably Aristotle (384-322 BC), produced a list of things that comprise quality of life writing specifically about “the good life” and “living well” and how public policy can help to foster it. In his work, Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle explained that eudaimonia means “doing and living well” and he used this term in the context of the highest human good. His treatise also examined the character traits that human beings need in order to live their lives in the best way. Another philosopher Epicurus created ethical theory of hedonism. He identified the eudaemonic life as the life of pleasure where eudaimonia is a more or less continuous experience of pleasure, just as freedom from pain and

Read More
908 Words | 4 Pages

At the end of everyone’s lives, the goal appears to be about attaining happiness. Describing how to obtain happiness has been an issue that was debated in the past but is still talked about now . In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle expands on his view of happiness and he focuses particularly on how reason helps recognize and pursue what will lead to happiness and the good life. I feel that Aristotle’s philosophies on happiness are important works within the field of philosophy and he considered one of the………of it . In this paper, I will explore Aristotle’s beliefs regarding happiness then compare and contrast them to those of Martin Seligman.

Read More
776 Words | 4 Pages

Aristotle argued that the good life would focus to a great extent on contemplation and learning, or acquiring the intellectual virtues. According to Aristotelian theories, to achieve eudaimonia, one must possess arête and telos. Arête can be directly translated as

Read More

More about Nichomachean Ethics By Aristotle

Related Topics

Open Document