Every area of human study or intellectual enquiry, even every action we engage in, has some final purpose in mind, some end goal. Aristotle’s philosophy is inherently teleological, meaning it always looks towards the final goal of an activity. The end goal of fields like medicine is to restore health, shipbuilding to build seaworthy vessels, carpentry to construct wooden shelves, and economics to produce wealth. The end goal of all these fields, the reason we care about our health or having ships that can sail across water or wealth, is because these activities allow human life to flourish and support our ability to be happy and live a life of virtue. In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle shares his view that the ultimate purpose of human activity and intellectual pursuits is happiness (eudaimonia).
In his book Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction, Jonathan Barnes suggests the translation of eudaimonia as happiness is misleading; eudaimonia is ‘an activity of the soul in accordance with excellence.’ Aristotle doesn’t mean by this happiness as a temporary state of mind produced by some indulgence like the purchase of an ice cream cone dripping with hot fudge. In fact, Aristotle tells us that virtuous actions in certain situations might even cause us pain, the exact opposite of pleasure. Happiness in this sense is not merely the pursuit of any object which gives us momentary pleasure, but a type of character, a way of interacting with the world, so that you live a life that people will admire, envy, and wish to emulate. Consequently, this also has the tendency of producing happiness in the form of a long-lasting contentment.
Aristotle tells us that the truly happy and virtuous man cannot be shaken from his happiness by the misfortunes of life. This is a typically Greek concern that features in numerous Ancient plays (think about Oedipus’ downfall in Sophocles’ play of the same name where plummets from his high position of wealth, fortune, and prosperity). The virtuous person can bear intense suffering and ride it out to see better days. Aristotle is not saying virtuous people never experience life-altering tragedies or grief, but rather his statements on the matter suggest that the virtuous person has the stronger ability of recovering from tragedy. If the virtuous person’s child died they would experience a pain and hole that would probably follow them around the rest of their lives, but after they recovered from their initial intensity of grief, they would return to some semblance of happiness, either by taking joy in their other children, reengaging with other parts of their life that make them happy, and more importantly because of their virtue not slipping into bad habits as a result of their grief. If this same tragedy happened to a person lacking in virtue and moderation there is a larger chance that in their grief they would spiral into bad habits, like say alcoholism, which would perpetuate the intensity of their grief and accelerate their downfall further into more degradation; such a person would stand a poor chance of ever recovering from their grief and misery to once again reach a state of happiness in comparison to the virtuous person. But what exactly does Aristotle mean by virtue and virtuous behavior? Is this some sort simple morality of acting good or bad towards your fellow humanity?
Aristotle defines virtue as the behaviors and actions we should strive to achieve in any given situation so that we can live a life of excellence that others will admire. For Aristotle virtue is the proper moderation of our behaviors, passions, pleasures, and attitudes. Asceticism is bad as it is an extreme, but so is too much pleasure. The virtuous person knows how to act in any given situation, not to extreme, and in a way that is socially admirable. Again, this is not the same as moral rules. The good for an individual and right conduct changes in any given situation. There is no precept or exact rules that apply universally, but changes with each particular situation. Too many variables exist. Aristotle is not dictating a dogmatic morality with defined rules (where certain actions and behaviors are always right or wrong), but an ethics which relies heavily on the context and specific elements of any given situation. His commentary about human behavior in the book should be seen as loose guidelines rather that hard unbreakable rules. Aristotle accepts the fact that what is epitomized as just and noble in one society might be considered the opposite in another society and culture. Nevertheless, while he accepts there might be exceptions to the rule, he argues that in most cases his points and observations about people and the way they should strive to act prove true in most cases.
The virtuous individual needs to feel pleasure and pain at the right time, towards the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way. If you get angry because someone stole your spot in a parking lot, and then enter a store, and scream abuse on the store clerk who had nothing to do with the incident then you’re probably not acting virtuous in the situation (your anger is being directed at the wrong person). If you rightly get angry at a person because they made some disparaging remark about your appearance, but your primary goal is revenge and humiliating the person rather than correcting their behavior and stopping them from repeating the incident, then you’re probably not acting virtuous (wrong motives). If your friend makes a racially-insensitive faux pas (not something blunt and clearly racist like using a racial slur) that invokes certain stereotypes that they might be ignorant about and then immediately apologizes for their blunder when they see that you’re upset, but then you continue to bring it up maliciously even though that friend has not repeated the mistake for years and has sincerely apologized, then you might not be acting virtuously (harboring too intense an anger for too long in the wrong way). This is the essence of Aristotle’s book and what he means by moderation and virtue. One needs to act in the right way, in the right time, in the right situation, etc.
The virtuous person acts in the right way based off the context of the situation in regards to all his affairs in life; Aristotle particularly explores the virtuous behavior and the extremes of anger, pleasure, courage, economics, self-indulgence, and social engagement. Aristotle writes about the extremes of each where too much and too little of any of these things is seen as bad. He explores what we should be aiming for in regards to how much money we spend, how much charity we give, how courageous we should act in a given situation, how we should act emotionally depending on circumstances, etc. It is easy to see this in regards to behavior, but let’s explore how this relates to spending money. It is common sense that you spend more money on a fancy dinner party celebrating your twentieth wedding anniversary where all your friends and family are invited than you would on an informal dinner with a couple of friends; however, some people might do the opposite and spend too much money when they shouldn’t on an informal dinner party, while being as cheap as possible when they need to flip the bill for hundred of guests; these actions would give the appearance that they are gaudy and not generous. Happiness and excellence (living a life others will envy) is living a life of moderation in all these areas without slipping into any extremes. So how does one develop a virtuous character?
Aristotle is one of the first behaviorists, believing we are trained at birth to react to pleasure and pain. The habits we develop in our childhood teach us to be good or bad. By extension, we are trained at birth to act virtuous or not. We learn to be virtuous by doing virtuous acts. However, this has a problem; if you think about this statement that would mean one need already be virtuous in order to become more virtuous. Nevertheless, Aristotle is clear that a single act doesn’t constitute virtue. It needs to transform into a behavior, a character, the nature of the person, a daily habit–the tendency to repeat the virtuous act over and over again without thinking much about it. Luckily a wide spectrum exists between the perfectly virtuous person and those who lack virtue; most people fall somewhere in the middle between what should be admired and what should be shunned. And we can change where we fall in that spectrum based on our everyday actions. Practice makes perfect, the more we act virtuously in these various areas of our lives the easier it gets. People become more virtuous through practice. So our everyday habits matter.
More traditional education, not just our behavior, also fits into this paradigm. Education is a means of developing good judgment about the world, which allows you to consider the contexts of situations with the wisdom and broader metaphysical knowledge of a philosopher. Aristotle says that an all-around education makes a person a good judge about matters. Every time you read a poem it increases your understanding of the world you live in and the people who inhabit it. Every time you study a dense philosophical text it gives you a broader understanding of the world, knowledge, and what underlies these concepts. The reason to study virtue and ethics is it allows one to understand the good and become a good citizen. Politics requires one to understand the good in any given situation so that politicians can legislate laws that inspire virtuous behavior–how human beings should or shouldn’t act. Government’s purpose is not to protect individual rights, but to make its citizens into better people. Good laws in government produce good citizens; bad laws tend to have the opposite effect. As different as this view of government might be from our modern opinions on the subject, one can still see these views on both sides of the ideological scale: good government can produce good citizens through education and should promote programs that encourage us to be better citizens in regards to our communities (the Left) and government needs to protect us from the evils lurking in the human soul (the right).
Aristotle’s book is both useful as a personal philosophy for living one’s life and educating us about certain ideas and political theories that still play an important role in today’s society.
Aristotle’s philosophy is basic common sense when you think about it, but one that still retains a deep insightfulness and originality of thought, that tries to remind us to consider our nature and purpose as human beings, and how we should attempt to live our lives based on that knowledge.
