Being charged with the task of comparing and contrasting Aristotle’s definition of happiness—or virtue ethics, with those of present day western culture, has proven to be quite the roller-coaster ride, and challenging on several fronts. Among other things, these challenges included beliefs and ideas that I agreed with; beliefs and ideas I disagree with; but perhaps the most commonly surfacing and formidable challenge for me while preparing an outline of my thoughts, was the peppering of my own self-doubts with regard to those things I thought I disagreed with, but lacked the clarity I sought because of the potential for any misinterpretation of Aristotle’s ideas that stemmed from likewise potential translation issues. That is, from the outset, something as minüte as Eudaemonia and happiness. Not to belabor this point, but for example—the Greeks use 3 separate words (Agapé, Eros, Phileo), for the one (English) word for “love”. In other words, I thought I understood both: those things spoken of during our lectures, but also those things from our texts. But the more I engaged in the due-diligence to understand Virtue Ethics, the more expansive I learned this material was going to be. My fundamental understandings of Aristotle’s concepts were erroneous, and so my initial, premature conclusions were comparable to ‘fruit of a poisoned tree’. After learning that for him, happiness was not temporary—but the result of a lifetime of living virtuously, the ultimate value of a life at this moment, based upon how well we reach our potential.
Those aspects of Aristotle’s beliefs that I found relatively easy to agree with, such as virtues defined as living in moderation, or the ‘Golden Mean’, that happiness is best thought of as an end, rather than a means; that seeking to be happy for happiness’ sake—on it’s own merit—is misguided and / or shortsighted. Rather, right (or virtuous) living ought to be what we seek, and then happiness will inevitably be the result.
Those ideas or concepts that I thought I disagreed with from our lectures and text reading, but cannot claim any longer that I enjoy the comfort of conviction with, is the fundamental idea that a precursor, or the contingency of certain external circumstances be in place, for one to be happy. The notion that the ‘ethical life is impossible without a good upbringing’, and other ‘non-moral’ traits, was in conflict with my own moral codes. My interpretation (or as stated in opening paragraph—possible misinterpretation) appears existential of a model not unlike “if / then” statements in computer programming. That is—at certain junctures in both our lectures in class, as well as while reading the text, Ethics, Discovering Right and Wrong, I initially—but now realized wrongly—interpreted: as long as the premise is true, so too are the conclusions. However, all of this said, I found the journey of riding this axis to and fro to be not just akin to a roller-coaster ride, but also a challenging and thought provoking sojourn, of which I am grateful for, into the juggernaut of my own self-examination. Let’s first turn this corner by clarifying Aristotle’s definition of happiness.
Aristotle’s definition of happiness is:
“…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.” (Aristotle)
At this juncture, it would be prudent to establish a benchmark of sorts, with the reasons why I was laboring under certain misperceptions, and thus somewhat critical of my initial thoughts on Aristotle’s ethics. Of course, this discussion by nature is a subjective one, not objective. Therefore, I was viewing everything I learned in lectures and readings through the prism of my own life experience. Basically, what this means is (to which my closest friends with attest), that perhaps my most impassioned core beliefs are along the lines of, “Happiness is an inside job”. To elaborate: When I was much younger, my happiness truly was contingent upon my having what I wanted—external to myself. Happiness was not wanting what I have…. rather it was having what I want. When the student is ready, the teacher appears, and so life-on-life’s-terms became my primary teacher, and I learned from experience that ‘happiness truly is an inside job’; that I need nothing external to myself to experience fulfillment (sans food, air and sunshine); that—if anything, my happiness and contentment has become more about subtraction than addition, or about un-learning than learning. The story that comes to mind to best illustrate this point is the story of Michelangelo and the Statue of David. When he was done with the statue of David, the people were so blown-away by the sheer detail, life-likeness, and beauty of it…the sheer celebration of God’s own artwork that is, the human body. They asked him how he did it, and his answer was (and the moral of the story), “Well, all I really did was chisel away everything that was NOT David….and when I was done—there was David.” In other words, everything he needed was already incarnate. Nothing needed to be added to the marble, only removed. Likewise, for a good portion of my life…. my worth, my value, my happiness and contentment, my ability to feel good about myself within my own skin, was contingent upon things external. Through some rough roads, and the aforementioned ‘life-on-life’s-terms’ school of hard-knocks, I learned to develop a sense of fulfillment that was spawned less from ego (external) and more from self-esteem (internal). For example, I learned that a relationship with a woman / significant other will yield the best fruit, if I am already happy of my own accord; that perhaps a woman can add or detract from my happiness—but that ultimately, my primary happiness must come from within, not primarily from her. To bring this back full-circle: As I stated at the beginning of this paper, not only was I laboring under a misperception about what Aristotle’s definition of virtue, and subsequently happiness (Eudaemonia) was, but I also was laboring under the misperception that these are mutually exclusive. I am now happy to say that I could not have been more wrong. In the course of researching and revisiting much of the course materials and other resources, I realized that Aristotle’s essential, distilled core message of “Happiness is the ultimate purpose of human existence”, NEED NOT be mutually exclusive to my own galvanized beliefs. I realized too, that I WAS misinterpreting this entire concept—initially anyway. That is, my own ideas are not at all different from what I now understand Aristotle was espousing in his writings; that it WAS in fact, my own misinterpretation of what he meant by ‘happiness being more goal related’ as an ends, not as a means, and can only be determine ultimately at the end of one’s life. His ideas need not conflict with those I’ve coveted for the last thirty years or so of my life. Perhaps the best articulation of the point I’d like to make is cited from a peer-reviewed article I found on the Internet:
- Happiness is the ultimate end and purpose of human existence
- Happiness is not pleasure, nor is it virtue. It is the exercise of virtue.
- Happiness cannot be achieved until the end of one’s life. Hence it is a goal and not a temporary state.
- Happiness is the perfection of human nature. Since man is a rational animal, human happiness depends on the exercise of his reason.
- Happiness depends on acquiring a moral character, where one displays the virtues of courage, generosity, justice, friendship, and citizenship in one’s life. These virtues involve striking a balance or “mean” between an excess and a deficiency.
- Happiness requires intellectual contemplation, for this is the ultimate realization of our rational capacities. (Pursuit of Happiness, Inc. a 501(c)(3) · EIN: 26–4756415)
So, which account of happiness is more convincing… Aristotle’s, or mine? Happily, the answer to this question changed for me, during the course of writing this paper. I initially had several qualms with my interpretation of some of Aristotle’s thoughts, notions, and beliefs. These primarily centered around my own fundamental concepts of happiness—and what I thought Aristotle’s were—as not jibing. I perceived initially, that Aristotle was segmenting out a big chunk of the population as hopelessly incapable of ethics, virtue or happiness due to their environmental, or external, circumstances. However he was not. On the contrary, the deeper I delved into the readings, the more I saw that my core beliefs and Aristotle’s, were not mutually exclusive—not by any means. My ‘qualms’ were the result of my own ignorance due to my own misinterpretation of what I was learning. Fortunately…. ‘stupid is forever, ignorance can be fixed’.
Cited Sources
Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. David Ross. Oxford University Press, 2009 (Revised).
Pojman, Louis P. Ethics, Discovering Right and Wrong. Cengage Learning, 1990, 2005.
“Pursuit of Happiness, Inc. a 501(c)(3) · EIN: 26–4756415.” Pursuit of Happiness. 1 March 2015 <http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/aristotle/>.
