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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

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