Steven Arkonovich

I. Eudaimonia

A. As a choiceworthy life

B. As a life structured by the "best good"

II. The Function Argument

1. Virtues and functions
2. Characteristic activities
3. The human function as rational activity

III. Ethical virtues and rational activity

1. Virtue as a state of character
2. Virtue as "concerned with choice"

1. For anything that has a function or a characteristic activity, the good of the thing resides in its function.

2. Human beings have a function.

3. The function of human beings must be to perform whatever activity is the distinctively human activity.

5. The function of human beings is to engage in this activity.

6. Thus, thus the human good is excellent activity of soul requiring reason.

Aristotle’s definition of Happiness: Happiness is activity of that part of the soul which follows or implies a rational principle, in accordance with virtue (and if there is more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete) throughout a complete life of at least moderate good fortune.

1. Must no one at all, then, be called happy while he lives; must we, as Solon says, see the end? Even if we are to lay down this doctrine, is it also the case that a man is happy when he is dead? Or is this not quite absurd, especially for those of us who say that happiness is an activity? But if we do not call the dead man happy, and if Solon does not mean this, but that one can safely call a man blessed, as being at last beyond evils and misfortunes, this also affords matter for discussion; for both evil and good are thought to exist for a dead man, as much as for one who is alive but not aware of them; e.g., honors and dishonors and the good or bad fortunes of children, and descendants in general. [1100a15].

2. Hence a young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start with these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end aimed at is not knowledge but action [1095a2-6].

3. …argument and teaching we may suspect are not powerful with all men, but the soul of the student must first have been cultivated by means of habits for noble joy and noble hatred. The character, then must somehow be there largely with a kinship to excellence, loving what is noble and hating what is base.

4. Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. But a certain difference is found among ends; some are activities, others are products apart from the activities that produce them.

5. If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? [1094a18-25].

6. Everyone who is able to live according to his own choosing sets up some goal for the good life–honor or reputation, or riches, or intellectual cultivation–by looking to which he will perform all of his actions (since not to organize one’s life with a view to some end is a sign of great stupidity. Hence, we must above all, determine for ourselves, neither precipitately nor frivolously, in which of the things that belong to us good living consists [EE 1214b6-14].

7. We may remark, then, that every virtue or excellence both brings into good condition the thing of which it is the excellence and makes the work of that thing be done well; e.g. the [virtue] of the eye makes both the eye and its work good; for it is by the [virtue] of the eye that we see well…Therefore, if this is true in every case, the virtue of man also will be the state of character which makes a man good and which makes him do his own work well [1106a].

10. Have the carpenter, then, and the tanner certain functions or activities, and has man none? Is he born without a function? Or as eye, hand, foot, and in general each of the parts evidently has a function, may one lay it down that man similarly has a function apart from all these? What then can this be [1097b27]?

11. …or each state of character has its own ideas of the noble and the pleasant, and perhaps the good man differs from others most by seeing the truth in each class of things, being as it were the norm and measure of them. In most things the error seems to be due to pleasure; for it appears a good when it is not. We therefore choose the pleasant as a good, and avoid pain as an evil [1113a28-b1].

Bibliograpy

Annas, Julia, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford: 1993)

Broadie, Sarah, Ethics with Aristotle (Oxford: 1995)

Cooper, John, Reason and the Human Good in Aristotle (Harvard: 1975)

Korsgaard, Christine, "Virtue and Function in Aristotle." History of Philosophy Quarterly (July 1986)

Kraut, Richard, Aristotle on the Human Good (Princeton: 1991)