Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle: Eudaimonia, Virtue, and the Good Life

Aristotle and the Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle was born in 384 BCE in Stagira, Macedonia, the son of a court physician. He came to Athens at seventeen to study at Plato's Academy, where he remained for twenty years until Plato's death in 347. He was Plato's most brilliant and most independent student: he absorbed Platonism thoroughly enough to critique it from within rather than from outside, and developed a philosophical system that was in many ways the opposite of Plato's while building on its foundations.

The Nicomachean Ethics is named for Aristotle's son Nicomachus, who may have edited the work after Aristotle's death. It is probably a set of lecture notes rather than a polished literary text: the writing is dense and often elliptical, sentences refer back to points made several books earlier, and the argument sometimes loops back on itself. This can make it challenging to read but also means that close readers are rewarded in proportion to their effort.

The Nicomachean Ethics is one of the most influential texts in the Western tradition. It was the primary ethical text in the Islamic philosophical tradition through Averroes and Avicenna, in medieval Jewish philosophy through Maimonides, and in Christian scholasticism through Aquinas. The modern virtue ethics revival, associated with Philippa Foot, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Rosalind Hursthouse, is explicitly Aristotelian in its inspiration.

The Highest Good

The Nicomachean Ethics opens with one of the most confident first sentences in the philosophical tradition: "Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good." Aristotle's ethics begins from this observation: human beings are purposive creatures; everything we do, we do for the sake of something.

But if everything is done for the sake of something else, there must be something at the top of the hierarchy -- something that we desire for its own sake and not for the sake of anything further. Otherwise the chain of purposes never terminates and the entire structure is groundless. There must be a highest good: something that is good in itself and for the sake of which everything else is sought.

Almost everyone, Aristotle notes, agrees on the word for this highest good: eudaimonia. Where they disagree is about what eudaimonia is. The many say it is pleasure. The refined say it is honor. The theoretical say it is contemplation. Part of Aristotle's project is to adjudicate between these competing accounts and to show what eudaimonia actually consists in.

What Eudaimonia Is (and Isn't)

Eudaimonia is typically translated as "happiness" but this translation is misleading in ways that Aristotle himself anticipated. He explicitly argues against the equation of eudaimonia with pleasure (the hedonist position) and against the equation of eudaimonia with honor (the political position).

Against pleasure: the pleasurable life is available to cattle. A human life that consists entirely in pleasure does not seem admirable or worthy of the word "flourishing," no matter how pleasant it is. Pleasure may be a component of eudaimonia but it is not its definition.

Against honor: honor depends on those who give it and is therefore external to the person honored. What we want to call the good life should be something that belongs to the person and cannot be taken away simply by changing others' opinions. Honor also seems to be pursued for the sake of something else (typically, the recognition that one has virtue), which means it is not the highest good.

Aristotle's positive account: eudaimonia is activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, or if there are several virtues, in accordance with the best and most complete, and this over a complete life. Several features of this definition are worth unpacking:

The "complete life" requirement is also important. Aristotle says one swallow does not make a spring, and a happy day does not make a blessed and happy person. Eudaimonia is a quality of a whole life, not a momentary state. This is why Aristotle cites Solon's saying that we should call no one happy until they are dead: only when we can see the shape of a complete life can we judge whether it was a good one.

The Function Argument

To determine what eudaimonia consists in, Aristotle uses the function argument (ergon argument). Every kind of thing has a characteristic function: the function of a knife is cutting, the function of a lyre player is playing the lyre. What is the function of a human being?

Aristotle eliminates the merely nutritive life (shared with plants), the merely sensitive life (shared with animals), and arrives at the rational life: the exercise of the soul's faculties in accordance with reason. This is what is distinctively human -- not that we have a body or that we are alive or that we have perceptions, but that we have reason and can act in accordance with it.

The good for humans is the excellent exercise of this function: the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue. Just as the good lyre player plays the lyre well (exercises the function of a lyre player excellently), the good human being exercises the human function -- rational activity -- excellently.

The function argument has been extensively criticized: why should the characteristic function of a kind determine what is good for members of that kind? A knife's function is cutting but it doesn't follow that being a good knife is good for the knife. However, Aristotle may not be making this slide: he may be making the more defensible claim that what constitutes excellent human functioning is what we should be trying to understand, and that the concept of a distinctive human function helps us identify what kind of excellence is in question.

Virtue as Stable Disposition

Virtue (arete) is defined as a stable disposition (hexis) of character that allows us to feel and act in accordance with the right amount in the right way at the right time toward the right people for the right reason. It is not merely a habit of action but a habit of perception, feeling, and motivation as well.

The virtuous person does not merely act courageously while feeling afraid and overcoming their fear through will. They feel the appropriate amount of fear -- enough to be properly cautious, not so much as to be paralyzed -- and are moved by it appropriately. Their emotional responses and their actions are integrated; there is no gap between what they feel called to do and what they do.

This is the ideal. The continent person (sophronic) acts correctly while feeling wrong impulses that they suppress. The incontinent person (akratic) acts incorrectly despite feeling that they should act differently. The virtuous person acts correctly and feels appropriately, without internal conflict. Character ethics aims at this integration of feeling and action, not merely at correct behavior over internal resistance.

Crucially, virtue is not given at birth but developed through practice. Aristotle's famous formula: we become courageous by doing courageous things, we become temperate by doing temperate things, we become just by doing just things. The actions come before the stable character; once the character is stable, the actions flow from it naturally. This is the opposite of the Kantian picture where moral worth is determined entirely by the rational intention behind an act.

The Doctrine of the Mean

The doctrine of the mean provides the formal structure of virtue. Every virtue is a mean between two vices -- one of excess, one of deficiency -- with respect to the relevant feeling and action.

Courage is the mean between cowardice (too little confidence and response to danger) and recklessness (too much confidence and too little fear). Generosity is the mean between miserliness (too little giving, too much holding) and prodigality (too much giving, too little saving). Proper pride is the mean between servility (thinking too little of oneself) and arrogance (thinking too much). Truthfulness about oneself is the mean between false modesty and boastfulness.

The mean is not an arithmetic average between the two extremes. Ten pounds of food might be too little for a wrestler and too much for a student: the appropriate amount is relative to the person, the situation, and the specific demands of the case. The mean is what a practically wise person -- a person of phronesis -- would determine to be appropriate in the specific situation.

This makes virtue context-sensitive in a way that distinguishes it sharply from rule-based ethics. Aristotle does not provide a table of rules for how much to give or how much to fear. He provides a framework for thinking about the structure of virtue and a description of the character type (the practically wise person) whose judgment is the standard. This puts a great deal of weight on phronesis.

Key Moral Virtues

Aristotle analyzes a wide range of moral virtues in Books III-V of the Nicomachean Ethics. The most important include:

Phronesis: Practical Wisdom

Phronesis (practical wisdom) is the master virtue that makes the other virtues possible. It is the intellectual virtue that allows a person to deliberate well about what is good and expedient -- not merely in a specific domain but in life generally.

Aristotle distinguishes phronesis from techne (technical skill), which is knowledge of how to produce a specific kind of result; from episteme (scientific knowledge), which is demonstrative knowledge of necessary truths; and from sophia (theoretical wisdom), which is excellence in contemplating the highest and most invariable objects (mathematical truths, the divine).

Phronesis is knowledge of what is good for human beings in the circumstances in which they actually find themselves. It is practical in the precise sense: it is engaged with particulars, with specific situations and specific persons, rather than with universal principles. It cannot be reduced to rules or algorithms because the features of situations that are ethically relevant are too complex and variable to be captured in advance by any set of rules.

The relationship between phronesis and virtue of character is circular in a productive way: genuine virtue of character requires phronesis (without it, the other virtues can go wrong -- the coward's recklessness might look like courage without practical wisdom to distinguish them), and phronesis requires virtue of character (the person without good character will use their deliberative capacity in service of their distorted ends).

Akrasia: Weakness of Will

Akrasia is one of the most psychologically realistic topics in the Nicomachean Ethics. Akrasia means acting against one's better judgment: choosing to eat the cake while knowing that one shouldn't, choosing to lie while believing lying is wrong, choosing to stay in bed while knowing that one should get up.

Socrates had argued that akrasia is impossible: if you truly know that X is bad, you cannot choose X. What looks like weakness of will is actually ignorance -- the person who chooses the worse option didn't really know it was worse, or was overriding their knowledge with a stronger contrary belief.

Aristotle rejects this. Akrasia is clearly a real phenomenon; the philosophical question is how to explain it. His explanation: there is a difference between having knowledge and actively using it. The akratic person has the relevant universal knowledge ("sweet things are bad for me") and the relevant particular belief ("this is sweet") but the desire for the pleasant thing temporarily suppresses the active application of the knowledge. In the moment of action, the desire is active; the knowledge is present but not operative. After the act, when desire is satisfied, the knowledge returns and the person recognizes what they have done.

This account maps very well onto modern dual-process theories of decision-making: System 1 (automatic, affective, fast) can override System 2 (deliberative, rational, slow) when emotional responses are strong. Aristotle had the phenomenology right twenty-three centuries before the neuroscience.

Friendship (Philia)

Books VIII and IX of the Nicomachean Ethics, devoted to friendship (philia), are among the most rich and practically useful sections of the work. Aristotle argues that friendship is not a luxury but an essential component of eudaimonia: the happy person needs friends, because the excellent human activities that constitute happiness are most fully realized in shared activity with people who are genuinely good.

The three types of friendship are organized by what the friends value in each other. Friendships of utility value the friend for what they can do for you (business partnerships, professional relationships). Friendships of pleasure value the friend for the enjoyment they provide (companions in specific activities, people whose company is fun). Both of these types are unstable because they depend on contingent features that change: if the utility or pleasure ceases, the friendship dissolves.

Virtue friendship is the highest type. In virtue friendship, each person values the other for their character -- for who they are, not for what they provide. Each wishes good for the other for the other's sake. This type of friendship is rare (it requires that both parties be genuinely good, which is uncommon) and takes time to develop (character must be proven through sustained exposure), but it is also the most stable and the most deeply satisfying.

Aristotle's account of virtue friendship anticipates a great deal of modern relationship science. Friendships of utility and pleasure are what sociologists now call "weak ties" and "recreational acquaintances." Virtue friendship corresponds to what positive psychology calls "high-quality connections" -- relationships characterized by genuine mutual interest, mutual care, and mutual growth. The research confirms Aristotle's intuition: these relationships are among the strongest predictors of wellbeing.

Pleasure and Its Role

Aristotle discusses pleasure twice in the Nicomachean Ethics (Books VII and X), and his account is more nuanced than simple pleasure-endorsement or pleasure-demotion. He argues against the Platonic view that pleasure is bad or inherently problematic; pleasure is not, for Aristotle, something that competes with virtue.

The virtuous person takes pleasure in virtuous activity. The generous person takes genuine pleasure in giving well. The courageous person takes genuine pleasure in facing danger appropriately. Pleasure is not the goal of virtuous activity but it is its natural accompaniment -- the sign that the activity is being done with full engagement and without internal conflict.

The bodily pleasures that are most commonly associated with the word "pleasure" (food, drink, sex) are not condemned but contextualized. The temperate person enjoys appropriate bodily pleasures appropriately; they do not flee bodily pleasure ascetically, nor do they pursue it without limit. The pleasures of intellectual activity and virtue are also genuine pleasures, and Aristotle argues that they are higher -- more complete, more lasting, less subject to the law of diminishing returns -- than bodily pleasures.

Contemplation as the Highest Life

In Book X, Aristotle argues that the highest form of eudaimonia is the life of theoretical contemplation (theoria). This creates apparent tension with the rest of the work, which has been concerned with the moral virtues and practical wisdom applicable to the political life. The resolution requires care.

Aristotle's argument for the supremacy of contemplation: it is the activity of the highest faculty (nous, intellect) in relation to the highest objects (mathematical and philosophical truths, the divine). It is the most self-sufficient activity (it requires minimal external equipment), the most continuous (we can contemplate longer without needing rest than we can sustain physical activity), the most pleasant, and the most divine -- the activity that most closely resembles what a divine intellect would do.

However, Aristotle qualifies this immediately: humans are composite beings, not pure intellects. The life of pure contemplation is the life of nous in us -- divine in us but not fully us. To the extent that we can live it, it is the highest life; but to the extent that we are also embodied, political, social beings, the life of political virtue -- the exercise of moral virtues in civic life -- is the secondary ideal that most fully fits our complete nature.

This qualification is important. The Nicomachean Ethics is not arguing that theoretical philosophers are better than statesmen and practical people. It is arguing that both forms of excellence are genuine, that both are components of eudaimonia, and that the fully flourishing human life will include both -- intellectual development and practical virtue in social life.

Aristotle vs Plato on Ethics

The contrast between Aristotle's ethics and Plato's is philosophically fundamental. Plato grounds ethics in the Form of the Good: there is a single, eternal, abstract entity that provides the ultimate standard of all value, and the philosopher who comes to know it can derive ethical conclusions from metaphysical principles. Aristotle rejects this approach explicitly: there is no single Form of the Good; "good" is said in many ways, and what is good for one kind of thing may not be good for another kind. The Form of the Good, even if it existed, would not be useful for ethical practice, because what we need is not universal knowledge but the practical wisdom to respond to particular situations.

Aristotle's method is correspondingly different. He begins from the phenomena -- from what appears good to people of good character and sound judgment -- and proceeds to articulate and systematize what appears. The standard is not a metaphysical Form but the practically wise person (the phronimos), whose judgment serves as the benchmark for what is good. This makes Aristotle's ethics more empirically grounded and more sensitive to particularity than Plato's, but also less unified and less able to provide the kind of ultimate grounding that Plato seeks.

The connection to the Hermetic tradition runs through both Platonic and Aristotelian streams. The Hermetic tradition absorbed Aristotle through the Islamic philosophical tradition (Averroes's commentaries on Aristotle influenced both Islamic mysticism and Western esotericism) and Plato through Neoplatonism. The practical ethics of character development -- the habituation, the development of stable dispositions, the cultivation of practical wisdom -- is compatible with and often presupposed by the Hermetic initiatory path.

Modern Relevance

The twentieth century saw a significant revival of Aristotelian ethics in response to the failures of both Kantian deontology (which seemed to produce correct principles without adequate sensitivity to context) and utilitarian consequentialism (which seemed to reduce ethics to a calculus that missed the importance of character and relationships). Philippa Foot's Natural Goodness (2001), Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981), Rosalind Hursthouse's On Virtue Ethics (1999), and Martha Nussbaum's The Fragility of Goodness (1986) all develop contemporary versions of Aristotelian ethics.

What modern virtue ethics shares with Aristotle: the primacy of character over rules, the importance of practical wisdom as context-sensitive judgment, the recognition that good emotions are part of virtue rather than obstacles to it, the significance of friendship and social relationships for human flourishing, and the conception of ethics as primarily about what kind of person to be rather than what rules to follow.