Aristotle: Happiness

Tianna Savoy

Ethics

Fall 2017

                                                                         Happiness

    Aristotle and Epicurus had similar but also different views about happiness. They both viewed happiness as the end goal. However, they believed that different things made up what happiness consist of. Aristotle believed that the exercise of virtue and moral character had much to do with one’s happiness and happiness should not pass pleasure. However, Epicurus believed that pleasure was more important than anything. The biggest difference between the two was that Aristotle believed that the gods also had a significant contribution to one’s happiness and Epicurus disagreed.

    Aristotle believed that happiness relied on having a good moral character which is the ultimate or complete virtue. This includes, generosity, courage, friendship and being a good citizen.  Aristotle suggests that we might arrive at a clearer conception of happiness if we could first ascertain the function of a human being. The justification of this line of inquiry is that ‘‘for all things that have a function or activity, the good and the well is thought to reside in the function.’’ Therefore, everything that is done aims at a good.

    “The function of man is to live a certain kind of life, and this activity implies a rational principle, and the function of a good man is the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed it is performed in accord with the appropriate excellence: if this is the case, then happiness turns out to be an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.”

The central argument that arises establishes that the human function is an active life of the element that has a rational principle. Function does not mean purpose but rather a way of functioning — how a thing does what it does. The way things are done by human beings is through making rational choices. Happiness requires intellectual examination because it is the realization of our rational thought. The human good or happiness is not merely a result of rational choice, but consists in it, because “a rational action or activity is one whose principle expresses the agent's conception of what is worth doing for the sake of what.” Aristotle believed that happiness was something that came over time. He also argued that to live a good life we have to make the right choices. Happiness cannot be achieved by simply enjoying momentary pleasures. For example, one saying they are happy because they got a new pair of shoes. True happiness cannot be made up of such materialistic or temporary pleasures. Happiness comes through overcoming challenges, maximizing our potential through our skills and making use of our unique reasoning. Reasoning things out helps us to make ends meet and solve our problems. Aristotle believed that good for humans and animals differed because humans have potential. We have a rational capacity and by exercising this capacity we are basically perfecting our nature as human beings. Aristotle made this point to show why pleasure cannot constitute a humans happiness. Pleasures is what animals seek and humans have a higher capacities than animals.

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