The virtuous person has the most pleasant life but this life cannot be devoted exclusively to the pursuit of pleasure.Īll three of the main types of friendship (for pleasure, for advantage, and for the good) are concerned with the good of the other person but only the best sort of friendship-friendship for the good between virtuous people- involves A’s concern for B’s good for B’s own sake and for B’s essential characterĪristotle infers that study is the happiest life available to us, insofar as we have the rational intellects we share with the gods Book 1: Happiness The value of this pleasure depends on the value of the activity on which the pleasure follows Incontinence (or ‘weakness of will’) is usually taken to consist in knowing that x is better than y, but choosing y nonetheless. The right moral choice requires experience of particular situations, since general rules cannot be applied mechanically to particular situations. To be a generous person, I must not only know how to give money on the right occasions, and have generous impulses I must also direct my capacities and feelings to the right goals, so that I act from the right desires, for the right reasons, and on the right occasions If virtuous activity controls happiness, we need to know what the relevant virtues are to secure happiness (i 13). The human good, therefore, is an ACTIVITY of the SOUL in accordance with complete virtue in a complete life.Īristotle claims that virtuous activity CONTROLS happiness Since a human being is essentially a rational agent, the function of a human being is a life guided by practical reason. To find a more definite account of happiness, Aristotle argues from the human FUNCTION, the characteristic activity that is essential to a human being, in the same way as a purely nutritive life is essential to a plant, and a life guided by sense perception and desire is essential to an animal (see notes to i 7.§12–13). Happiness is the right starting point for an ethical theory because, in Aristotle’s view, rational agents necessarily choose and deliberate with a view to their ultimate good, which is happiness it is the ultimate end, since we want it for its own sake, and we want other things for its sake.

In 323 Alexander died in the resulting outbreak of anti-Macedonian feeling in Athens, Aristotle left for Chalcis, on the island of Euboea (cf. In 334 he returned to Athens and founded his own school, the Lyceum. In 367 B.C., Aristotle came to Athens and was a member of PLATO’s Academy until the death of Plato in 347. Aristotle was born in Stagira in Macedon (now part of northern Greece see note to i 2.§8, v 7.§1) in 384 B.C.

Nichomachean