We all want to live good lives. No one wakes up in the morning and decides that they want to live a purposeless, empty, meaningless existence. But what exactly does it mean to live a good life? How will we know when we achieve it? There are many different things that are thought to contribute to the good life – wealth, happiness, deep friendships, and passionate romance are all examples. While these all might be involved in living a good life, we are interested in the core of the good life. What is the most fundamental thing that makes a life good? Today, we’ll consider Aristotle’s answer to that question, but before we do that, weigh in on the following poll to cast your vote for what makes a life good.
Aristotle (384-322 BC) was a Greek philosopher who studied under Plato and went on to be one of the most influential thinkers to ever live. Simply called “The Philosopher” by Thomas Aquinas and others in the medieval period, Aristotle’s views would eventually be synthesized with Christian theology, laying the intellectual foundation for later scholarly developments in Western Europe.
You’ll be reading a selection from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Comprised of ten books (or what we think of as chapters), the Nicomachean Ethics lays out Aristotle’s moral philosophy, and is widely considered to be one of the most important works of ancient philosophy and a foundational text for the area of philosophy called virtue ethics. If you’re interested, the full text of the Nicomachean Ethics can be found here.
Final Good – A good that we pursue for its own sake. Common examples of final goods include happiness, knowledge, and friendship
Instrumental Good – A good that we pursue for the sake of some other good. A common example is money, as money allows us to purchase other kinds of goods
Eudaimonia – Frequently translated as ‘happiness’, eudaimonia means the attainment of active human flourishing, and is the end Aristotle identifies as humanity’s highest final good
Function – The characteristic activity of a given thing which makes it what it is. The function of a knife is cutting, while the function of a heart is to pump blood
Virtue – The consistent and reliable tendency to perform one’s function excellently. When a person has a certain virtue, like courage, they have spent time developing the habit, in this case reacting to danger well, using their human abilities. The virtues then make it possible for us to live a life of flourishing
Aristotle begins by considering the difference between two kinds of goals, those that we aim to achieve because they help us accomplish other goals and those that we aim at for their own sake.
Book 1.1-2
Every art and every kind of inquiry, and likewise every act and purpose, seems to aim at some good: and so it has been well said that the good is that at which everything aims.
But a difference is observable among these aims or ends. What is aimed at is sometimes the exercise of a faculty, sometimes a certain result beyond that exercise. And where there is an end beyond the act, there the result is better than the exercise of the faculty.
Now since there are many kinds of actions and many arts and sciences, it follows that there are many ends also; e.g. health is the end of medicine, ships of shipbuilding, victory of the art of war, and wealth of economy […]
If then in what we do there be some end which we wish for on its own account, choosing all the others as means to this, but not every end without exception as a means to something else (for so we should go on ad infinitum, and desire would be left void and objectless),—this evidently will be the good or the best of all things. And surely from a practical point of view it much concerns us to know this good; for then, like archers shooting at a definite mark, we shall be more likely to attain what we want.
In this passage, Aristotle points out that all of the actions we perform aim at some kind of good. When we go shopping, we aim to buy food. When we go to school, we aim to acquire knowledge. And when we apply for jobs, we aim to be employed. Some of the goods we aim at are helpful because they help us to pursue other goods. We want a job, so that we can make money. And we want to make money because then we can buy food. And we want to buy food so that we can eat. For this reason, all of these goods – the job, the money, the food – are potential examples of instrumental goods. They are good because of the other goods they help us obtain.
But Aristotle points out that this chain cannot go on forever. If every good we seek is only good because it leads to something else, then this process of aiming at one thing so we can get another would never end. Instead, Aristotle thinks that there must be some final good that we pursue for its own sake. This final good helps explain why we pursue instrumental goods in the first place. Ultimately, we are trying to reach some final good or goods that make it worth pursuing things like a job, money, and food.
Having established that, when we act, we are ultimately aiming at a final good, Aristotle asks what that final good might be. And that good is happiness!
Book 1.4
Since — to resume — all knowledge and all purpose aims at some good, what is this which we say is the aim of Politics; or, in other words, what is the highest of all realizable goods? As to its name, I suppose nearly all men are agreed; for the masses and the men of culture alike declare that it is happiness, and hold that to “live well” or to “do well” is the same as to be “happy.”
But they differ as to what this happiness is, and the masses do not give the same account of it as the philosophers. The former take it to be something palpable and plain, as pleasure or wealth or fame; one man holds it to be this, and another that, and often the same man is of different minds at different times,—after sickness it is health, and in poverty it is wealth; while when they are impressed with the consciousness of their ignorance, they admire most those who say grand things that are above their comprehension.
What is our final good, the thing that we do everything else for the sake of? Aristotle says that good is eudaimonia, translated here as ‘happiness’. But it is important to note that what we think of as happiness can distort what Aristotle is saying here. When we say, “I am happy”, we often mean that we are feeling a particular emotion or having a certain kind of experience. But when Aristotle talks about eudaimonia, he has a broader concept in mind. He wants to know, not what makes us psychologically happy, but what makes our lives go well. He wants to know what it takes to live a flourishing, well-lived life, and so we can also translate eudaimonia as ‘flourishing’. So when you are considering Aristotle’s arguments, think about not just what it takes to experience a feeling of happiness, but what it takes to live a flourishing life.
As Aristotle said at the end of the previous section, even though we agree that happiness in the form of flourishing is ultimately what we are aiming at, there is a considerable amount of disagreement about what a flourishing human life is like. To make progress on this question, Aristotle considers some popular proposals for what happiness might be like, starting with a life of pleasure.
Book 1.5
It seems that men not unreasonably take their notions of the good or happiness from the lives actually led, and that the masses who are the least refined suppose it to be pleasure, which is the reason why they aim at nothing higher than the life of enjoyment […]
The mass of men show themselves utterly slavish in their preference for the life of brute beasts, but their views receive consideration because many of those in high places have the tastes of Sardanapalus.
The first option that Aristotle considers for a flourishing life is a life focused on enjoying various pleasures like food and sex. While he doesn’t think that these things are bad in themselves, he does think that a life that only focuses on these things is too much like that of lower animals to be what human happiness is like. In fact, this contrast between humans and other animals will play a large role below in Aristotle’s ultimate conclusions about happiness when he considers the unique function of humans.
Does Aristotle give the life of pleasure its due? While it may be true that pursuing pleasure like lower animals do will not lead to a life of flourishing, there are other philosophers who have defended a more nuanced view of the role that pleasure plays in a happy human life. Epicurus held that pleasure is the only final good and that all other things we pursue are merely instrumental goods on the way to more pleasure, but he didn’t think of pleasure simply in terms of indulging our appetites for food and sex. Instead, Epicurus thought that the philosophical life would lead to more pleasure than a life of partying, leaving open the possibility that there is more to be said in favor of the life of pleasure.
If pleasure isn’t the ultimate goal of a flourishing life, then it must be something else. Next, Aristotle considers whether the final end of the happy life is to be honored by others.
Book I.9-10
Men of refinement with a practical turn prefer honour; for I suppose we may say that honour is the aim of the statesman’s life.
But this seems too superficial to be the good we are seeking: for it appears to depend upon those who give rather than upon those who receive it; while we have a presentiment that the good is something that is peculiarly a man’s own and can scarce be taken away from him.
Moreover, these men seem to pursue honour in order that they may be assured of their own excellence,—at least, they wish to be honoured by men of sense, and by those who know them, and on the ground of their virtue or excellence. It is plain, then, that in their view, at any rate, virtue or excellence is better than honour; and perhaps we should take this to be the end of the statesman’s life, rather than honour.
Here, Aristotle considers whether the flourishing human life might be found in being famous. He points out, though, that those who acquire fame and honor are always famous and honored for something.
Premise 1: Fame and honor are given to a person for some characteristic they possess
Premise 2: If fame and honor are given to a person for some characteristic they possess, then there is a characteristic that is more valuable than fame and honor
Premise 3: If there is a characteristic that is more valuable than fame or honor, then fame and honor cannot be the highest good
Conclusion: Fame and honor cannot be the highest good
The athlete who can sell out a stadium is famous for their athletic ability, and the soldier who receives the medal of honor is honored for their service and their bravery. But if we honor these individuals because of their character or talent, it must be that character or talent that is ultimately valuable, not the fame that comes along with it. From this, Aristotle concludes that fame and honor are not essential to the flourishing life, but that we must continue our search for what happiness consists of.
In the last passage, Aristotle mentions virtue as one of the things that can make a man worthy of honor. And this does seem to be a strong candidate. When we think of someone who has strong character – that is compassionate, honest, loyal, and just – we tend to think of them as flourishing people. So maybe this is what Aristotle has in mind?
Book 1.5
But virtue or excellence also appears too incomplete to be what we want; for it seems that a man might have virtue and yet be asleep or be inactive all his life, and, moreover, might meet with the greatest disasters and misfortunes; and no one would maintain that such a man is happy, except for argument’s sake.
Surprisingly, Aristotle does not say that flourishing consists in being a virtuous person (though we will see reason to qualify this position later on). Instead, he points out that someone could be virtuous but not living a flourishing life due to inactivity or bad luck. If someone is a virtuous person but falls into a coma, we would not say that they are living a flourishing life. So even though virtue will be an important part of how Aristotle thinks about happiness, simply being a virtuous person is not enough to capture his full account of eudaimonia.
Having ruled out other possibilities, Aristotle then turns to wealth. Earlier, we pointed out that some goods are final while others are merely instrumental. Final goods are those we want for their own sake, while instrumental goods are only desirable because of the other things they can help us acquire. Here, Aristotle emphasizes that money is only an instrumental good.
Book 1.5
As for the money-making life, it is something quite contrary to nature; and wealth evidently is not the good of which we are in search, for it is merely useful as a means to something else. So we might rather take pleasure and virtue or excellence to be ends than wealth; for they are chosen on their own account. But it seems that not even they are the end, though much breath has been wasted in attempts to show that they are.
Money is an instrumental good, because we want it for the things it can help us get, whether that is food, fame, or a fancy car. If your dollars tomorrow became worthless and you couldn’t buy anything with them, then money would cease to be valuable. But because money is an instrumental good, it can’t be the final end we are seeking. The best money could do is help us buy something that makes us happy, but it cannot make us flourishing people on its own.
If Aristotle is right that happiness is the final good that we are all aiming at, it is worth knowing more about what happiness is. In this section, Aristotle elaborates on happiness not by considering the kinds of things that give us happiness and joy. Remember, he is not working with just a psychological understanding of happiness. Instead, Aristotle thinks that what it is to flourish is tightly connected to our purpose or function. If we are performing our function well, that is when we are truly flourishing.
Book I.7
But perhaps the reader thinks that though no one will dispute the statement that happiness is the best thing in the world, yet a still more precise definition of it is needed.
This will best be gained, I think, by asking, What is the function of man? For as the goodness and the excellence of a piper or a sculptor, or the practiser of any art, and generally of those who have any function or business to do, lies in that function, so man’s good would seem to lie in his function, if he has one.
But can we suppose that, while a carpenter and a cobbler has a function and a business of his own, man has no business and no function assigned him by nature? Nay, surely as his several members, eye and hand and foot, plainly have each his own function, so we must suppose that man also has some function over and above all these.
What then is it? Life evidently he has in common even with the plants, but we want that which is peculiar to him. We must exclude, therefore, the life of mere nutrition and growth. Next to this comes the life of sense; but this too he plainly shares with horses and cattle and all kinds of animals. There remains then the life whereby he acts—the life of his rational nature, with its two sides or divisions, one rational as obeying reason, the other rational as having and exercising reason […]
Man’s function then being, as we say, a kind of life—that is to say, exercise of his faculties and action of various kinds with reason—the good man’s function is to do this well and beautifully [or nobly]. But the function of anything is done well when it is done in accordance with the proper excellence of that thing.
If this be so the result is that the good of man is exercise of his faculties in accordance with excellence or virtue, or, if there be more than one, in accordance with the best and most complete virtue.
But there must also be a full term of years for this exercise; for one swallow or one fine day does not make a spring, nor does one day or any small space of time make a blessed or happy man.
After eliminating a number of options for the happy life, Aristotle here begins to give his own account. According to Aristotle, the final good which we aim at is “exercise of our faculties in accordance with excellence or virtue,” and this is what leads to a flourishing or happy life. But wait a second. Didn’t Aristotle previously say that virtue is too incomplete to characterize the good life? Notice before that Aristotle said before that virtue wasn’t enough for flourishing, since a virtuous person could fall into a coma and be unable to exercise their virtues. But here, Aristotle says that exercising virtue is the key to flourishing, which avoids the previous difficulty.
In this passage, Aristotle draws a connection between when we say that something is good and when it fulfills its function. Knives are made for cutting, and so good knives are ones that cut well. Likewise, hammers are made for pounding in nails, and thus good hammers are those that are well-suited for the purpose of pounding nails. Aristotle then considers what our function is, what sort of thing humans are designed to do. He argues that the function unique to humans is living rationally, or living in accord with reason, making this a key part of what it is to live a good life.
Premise 1: If a human lives a good life, then he performs his function well or excellently.
Premise 2: The function of every human being is to consistently think and act rationally.
Conclusion: If a human lives a good life, then they do an excellent job of consistently thinking and acting rationally.
Aristotle motivates the second premise by considering what we have in common with other creatures. He considers, for example, whether our function is just being a live organism, but he points out that plants are also live organisms. He then asks whether our function is to be sentient, but other kinds of animals like horses and oxen are also sentient. This leads him to the conclusion that our rationality, and the fact that we can reason about the good, is what sets us apart from other kinds of living organisms, giving us a distinctive function that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom.
In the previous passage, Aristotle said that it is not possible to flourish, or be happy, for just a single moment. Instead, whether someone is fulfilling their purpose or function is something that can only be seen over the course of a life. For this reason, Aristotle had concluded that “to be happy takes a complete lifetime”. But if this is true, does that mean someone can only be happy after they’re dead, only after we know how their entire life went? Let’s see what Aristotle says.
Book I.9-10
For, as we said, happiness requires not only perfect excellence or virtue, but also a full term of years for its exercise. For our circumstances are liable to many changes and to all sorts of chances, and it is possible that he who is now most prosperous will in his old age meet with great disasters, as is told of Priam in the tales of Troy; and a man who is thus used by fortune and comes to a miserable end cannot be called happy […]
Are we, then, to call no man happy as long as he lives, but to wait for the end, as Solon said? And, supposing we have to allow this, do we mean that he actually is happy after he is dead? Surely that is absurd, especially for us who say that happiness is a kind of activity or life […]
We reply that it cannot be right thus to follow fortune. For it is not in this that our weal or woe lies; but, as we said, though good fortune is needed to complete man’s life, yet it is the excellent employment of his powers that constitutes his happiness, as the reverse of this constitutes his misery.
But the discussion of this difficulty leads to a further confirmation of our account. For nothing human is so constant as the excellent exercise of our faculties. The sciences themselves seem to be less abiding. And the highest of these exercises are the most abiding, because the happy are occupied with them most of all and most continuously (for this seems to be the reason why we do not forget how to do them).
The happy man, then, as we define him, will have this required property of permanence, and all through life will preserve his character; for he will be occupied continually, or with the least possible interruption, in excellent deeds and excellent speculations; and, whatever his fortune be, he will take it in the noblest fashion, and bear himself always and in all things suitably, since he is truly good.
Here, Aristotle says that someone can be happy even if they do not know how their life will end up. This is because someone can be virtuous even when they face misfortune. As Aristotle says, the virtuous person will “bear changes of fortune most nobly, and with perfect propriety in every way”. Thus, whether or not someone is virtuous, and therefore whether or not they are flourishing, can be revealed even in the moments that their life is going poorly due to circumstances beyond their control.
Aristotle has already mentioned that happiness, and the good human life, is the one lived in accordance with virtue. But he hasn’t said too much about the nature of virtue or what the specific virtues are. Setting the stage for his more detailed discussion of virtue in the rest of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle gives us just a taste here of a few intellectual and moral virtues.
Book I.13
Since happiness is an exercise of the vital faculties in accordance with perfect virtue or excellence, we will now inquire about virtue or excellence; for this will probably help us in our inquiry about happiness […]
We speak of intellectual excellences and of moral excellences; wisdom and understanding and prudence we call intellectual, liberality and temperance we call moral virtues or excellences. When we are speaking of a man’s moral character we do not say that he is wise or intelligent, but that he is gentle or temperate. But we praise the wise man, too, for his habit of mind or trained faculty; and a habit or trained faculty that is praiseworthy is what we call an excellence or virtue.
At the end of Book I, Aristotle turns to discuss the virtues, a topic that will occupy much of the rest of the Nicomachean Ethics. Because of his focus on the virtues, Aristotle is now one of the primary influences for contemporary philosophers working on virtue ethics. Along with taking the virtues to give us insight into how to live good lives, virtue ethicists also think that virtues like justice, honesty, temperance, and humility can help us determine what we should do and the kind of people we should be. For this reason, proponents of virtue ethics put an emphasis on developing the virtues through habitual practice rather than just following a list of moral rules.
In Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle gives us a broad view of what he thinks it means to live a good life. For Aristotle, the good life is one in which we develop and exercise the distinctive human ability to think and act rationally. Such a life, on Aristotle’s view, is a happy or flourishing life. In the rest of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle will fill in this more general picture, discussing the particular virtues that it takes to fulfill our unique human nature.
For a recap of Book I, and for a bit of the big picture of how Aristotle thinks about human flourishing and the virtues in the Nicomachean Ethics, check out this video on the Good Life in Aristotle:
For a more complete picture of what it means to live well, keep on reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, including his thinking about the moral virtues (Books II-V), the intellectual virtues (Book VI), and friendship (Books VIII-IX). And for more about virtue ethics, the area of ethics that develops Aristotle’s insights about the moral life, check out this essay on “Virtue Ethics” from 1000-Word Philosophy.
This work has been adapted from The Nicomachean Ethics, a title from the eCampusOntario Public Domain Core Collection. This work is in the public domain. All images were created using Midjourney and are the property of the Philosophy Teaching Library.
Siscoe, Robert Weston. 2023. “The Good Life and How to Live It: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book I.” The Philosophy Teaching Library. Edited by Robert Weston Siscoe, <https://philolibrary.crc.nd.edu/article/the-good-life-how-to-live-it/>
Occasionalism — a theory claiming that God is the only true cause of changes in the world. For example, when you high-five me, you’re not really the cause of the stinging sensation I experience. God is the cause. Your high five is just the occasion on which God causes it.
Interactionism — a theory claiming that things in the world can truly cause changes in each other. For example, when you high-five me, you truly cause me to experience a stinging sensation in my hand.
Substance Dualism — a theory claiming that the mind (or soul) and body are two distinct and very different things.
Body — what it sounds like! The body is the physical part or aspect of a thing and has characteristics like shape, size, etc.
Soul — that part or aspect of a thing involving mental aspects of their existence, e.g., thoughts, feelings, decisions, etc. The “soul”, in this sense, is more or less just the mind.
Causal Interaction — When one thing acts (i.e., itself does something) and in so acting makes another thing change. For example, when you high-five me, you cause me to experience a stinging sensation in my hand.
God as God – The phrase “God as God” is basically a synonym for “God the subject.” In other words, it refers to God precisely in God’s status as an incomprehensible divine Other.
Incarnation – The Christian doctrine of the incarnation is the notion that the word of God became fully human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. It is closely associated with the doctrine of the trinity, which asserts that God the Father, God the Son (Jesus as the word made flesh), and God the Holy Spirit are one God.
Religious Fanaticism – In Feuerbach’s use of the term, a religious fanatic is someone who is unwaveringly faithful to God as an utterly mysterious superhuman being. They subordinate other things—especially the love of other humans—to submission before this divine other.
God the Subject – When Feuerbach refers to God as a subject, he is referring to the commonplace religious belief that God is a being who has various attributes, like a loving nature.
Faith Separates Man From God – Faith separates God from man in this sense: it treats God as a mysterious other, a being radically distinct from us.
Faith – Belief in and fidelity to a transcendent divine subject like God.
Orthodoxy – Orthodoxy refers to “right belief,” and it is concern with identifying heresies and ensuring that people believe and practice correctly.
Indirect Form of Self-Knowledge – Feuerbach’s view is that religious belief is a naive way of relating to our human nature and its perfections. It is naive or childlike because it treats these as external realities that belong to God. He believes a mature and contemplative person realizes these don’t belong to God, but rather to our species, abstractly conceived.
Above the Individual Man – The human perfections are “above the individual” insofar as no particular individual ever perfectly realizes them. They are abstractions.
Divine Trinity – Feuerbach is having fun here. He is using the theological phrasing of the Trinity to talk about human perfections. In calling reason, love, and freedom of the will “divine,” he means they are absolutely good; they are activities whose goodness is intrinsic to their practice or exercise. This isn’t a novel philosophical view. For example, Immanuel Kant argued that autonomy or a good will is the only thing which is unconditionally good.
Perfections – The end to which a faculty or power is ordered. For example, omniscience would be the perfection of the intellect. Traditionally, God is said to possess all perfections.
Love – When Feuerbach writes about love, he is referring to unconditional concern for others and the desire for fellowship with them. He is here asserting that love, understood in this sense, is the perfect activity of the affective faculty. In other words, our feelings and passions are fully actualized and engaged in an intrinsically valuable activity when we genuinely love others.
Infinite – The infinite is whatever can be understood as unbounded or unlimited. Human nature in the abstract is unbounded and unlimited. It is only bounded or limited in its concrete form as it is realized by particular material individuals.
Higher Consciousness – The sort of consciousness that mature human beings possess, but which other animals do not. It is “higher” than animal consciousness because it involves thinking abstractly about the form or essence of things.
Science – Feuerbach uses the term science in its classical sense, meaning systematically organized knowledge. Any body of knowledge founded on an understanding of first principles and the essences of things is a science in this sense.
Popular Sovereignty – The view that a government’s authority to rule comes from the people, making a ruler subject to the will of their citizens.
The Divine Right of Kings – The theory that kings are chosen by God and thus that political revolt is a rebellion against the will of God.
Synthesis – The prefix ‘syn-’ means “together,” so a synthesis “brings together” or combines elements of both a thesis and its antithesis.
Antithesis– An antithesis is the contradiction of a thesis. For example, internationalism could be understood as the antithesis of nationalism.
Thesis – In Hegelian terms, a thesis can be understood as a position or theory. Examples include any of the “-isms” that we discuss in science, history, and philosophy, such as Darwinism, capitalism, nationalism, etc.
