Aristotle on Happiness

# Aristotle on Wisdom, Happiness, and God *The Surprising Conclusions of a Virtuous Pagan*

# Introduction: Why Aristotle * My experience reading Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics * The "Master of those who know" * A suite of key ideas that permanently affected the western consciousness * As a Christian, struggling with Aristotle (see Dante, Aquinas, Maximus the Confessor) is good for you -- even when he's wrong.

## What does Aristotle say in Nic. Ethics? 1. Everything has a purpose. Humans have a purpose. 2. Humans by nature have the potential (capacities) for virtue and wisdom. Our purpose is to actualize that potential: to become what we are. 2. To actualize our potential requires food, water, etc., and education (formation), habituation, and contemplation. (Growth in stature and wisdom) 6. Happiness is the full actualization of our potential in an active life spent practicing virtues. 3. There are moral and intellectual virtues. And the intellectual virtues are most Godlike. 4. The ultimate human virtue is performing intellectual activity: contemplation of God.

## What does he not say? 1. Humans are afflicted by original sin. 2. Virtue is easy. ## What do you say? Discussion time!

### 1. Everything has a purpose. Humans have a purpose. >"Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim... the good and the chief good is the end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this)."

### 2. Humans by nature have the potential (capacities) for virtue and wisdom. Our purpose is to actualize that potential: to become what we are. >"For just as for a flute-player, a sculptor, or an artist, and, in general, for all things that have a function or activity, the good and the 'well' is thought to reside in the function, so would it seem to be for man, if he has a function. Have the carpenter, then, and the tanner certain functions or activities, and has man none? Is he born without a function? Or as eye, hand, foot, and in general each of the parts evidently has a function, may one lay it down that man similarly has a function apart from all these? What then can this be?

Life seems to be common even to plants, but we are seeking what is peculiar to man. Let us exclude, therefore, the life of nutrition and growth. Next there would be a life of perception, but it also seems to be common even to the horse, the ox, and every animal. There remains, then, an active life of the element that has a logos." (I.7)

>“It is clear, then, from what has been said, that it is not possible to be good in the strict sense without practical wisdom, or practically wise without moral virtue.” (VI.13)

### 3. To actualize our potential requires food, water, etc., and education (formation), habituation, and contemplation. (Growth in stature and wisdom) “And that all these attributes belong most of all to the wise man is manifest. He, therefore, is the dearest to the gods. And he who is that will presumably be also the happiest; so that in this way too the wise man will more than any other be happy.” (X.9) Compare: "Growth in wisdom and stature, favor with God and man" (Luke 2)

### 4. Happiness is the full actualization of our potential in an active life spent practicing virtues. >“The function of a good man [is] the good and noble performance of [human activities], and if any action is well performed when it is performed in accordance with the appropriate virtue: if this is the case], human good turns out to be activity of soul exhibiting virtue.” (I. 12)

### 5. There are moral and intellectual virtues. And the intellectual virtues are most Godlike. >"We divided the virtues of the soul and a said that some are virtues of character and others of intellect." (VI.1) >"The virtue of a thing is relative to its proper work... the work of intellectual parts of the soul is truth." (VI.2) >"Is happiness to be acquired by learning or by habituation or some other sort of training, or comes in virtue of some divine providence or again by chance? Now if there is any gift of the gods to men, it is reasonable that happiness should be god-given, and most surely god-given of all human things inasmuch as it is the best...virtue seems to be the best thing in the world, and something godlike and blessed." (I.9) >"If happiness is activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be that of the best thing in us. Whether it be reason or something else that is this element which is thought to be our natural ruler and guide and to take thought of things noble and divine, whether it be itself also divine or only the most divine element in us, the activity of this in accordance with its proper virtue will be perfect happiness. That this activity is contemplative we have already said." (X.7)

### 6. The ultimate human virtue is performing intellectual activity: contemplation of God. >"But that perfect happiness is a contemplative activity will appear from the following consideration as well. We assume the gods to be above all other beings blessed and happy; but what sort of actions must we assign to them? Acts of justice? Will not the gods seem absurd if they make contracts and return deposits, and so on? Acts of a brave man, then, confronting dangers and running risks because it is noble to do so? Or liberal acts? To whom will they give? It will be strange if they are really to have money or anything of the kind. And what would their temperate acts be? Is not such praise taste- less, since they have no bad appetites? If we were to run through them all, the circumstances of action would be found trivial and unworthy of gods."

>*Still, everyone supposes that they live and therefore that they are active; we cannot suppose them to sleep like Endymion. Now if you take away from a living being action, and still more production, what is left but contemplation? Therefore the activity of god, which surpasses all others in blessedness, must be contemplative;* and of human activities, therefore, that which is most akin to this must be most of the nature of happiness. (X.8)

>“But such a life would be too high for man; for it is not in so far as he is man that he will live so, but in so far as something divine is present in him; and by so much as this is superior to our composite nature is its activity superior to that which is the exercise of the other kind of virtue. If reason is divine, then, in comparison with 30 man, the life according to it is divine in comparison with human life. But we must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us; for even if it be small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth surpass everything.”

## He does not say: humans are afflicted by original sin. Rather, we can be distracted by pleasure, vice, and folly from actualizing our potential. We remain saplings instead of full grown oaks. >"Now the mass of mankind are evidently quite slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts." (I.5)

## He does not say: Virtue is easy. Rather, it requires effort, good education, a good society, natural giftings. >"The happy life is thought to be virtuous; now a virtuous life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement. And we say that serious things are better than laughable things and those connected with amusement, and that the activity of the better of any two things-whether it be two elements of our being or two men-is the more serious; but the activity of the better is ipso facto superior and more of the nature of happiness. And any chance person-even a slave-can enjoy the bodily pleasures no less than the best man; but no one assigns to a slave a share in happiness-unless he assigns to him also a share in human life. For happiness does not lie in such occupations, but, as we have said before, in virtuous activities." (X.6)

## 2 minutes left * Questions? * What is Aristotle's definition of happiness? * How does that square with "blessedness" of the Sermon on the Mount and Psalm 1