http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0195085604.001.

0001/acprof9780195085600
Ethics with Aristotle, Sarah Broadie
Chapter 1, Happiness, the Supreme End
Aristotle's Ethics begins and ends (1) with this question of the best life, since the
task of ethics, as he conceives it, is to seek a systematic answer. 2
One of the assumptions which we must share or pretend to share is that among
competing answers to the question What is the best life? there must be better and
worse. Having accepted this much we might naturally suppose that just one answer
is best. 4

Then what is the supreme good? There is no agreement except on a word.

Everyone, the ordinary man and the person of refinement, talks about
happiness12 (eudaimonia), and takes it that living well and doing well are the
same as being happy (1095 a 1720). But here consensus ends.
However, if we attend to how people live their lives rather than to what they say
(1095 b 14 ff.), it seems that common and coarse people identify happiness with
pleasure and would be satisfied with a life of gratification. But two other kinds of
life, as well as the life of pleasure, are mooted as possible ideals by people who
talk about these things. One is political, the other theoretic
Those who pursue honour do so really because they want the assurance that
they are good, for they desire the respect of people whose judgment carries
weight, and who respect them for their virtue or personal excellence, not
anything else. This shows that excellence is better than honour. But even
excellence cannot be happiness. It falls short because it is a disposition (p.25)
not an activity
Good people still count as good even when asleep or in trouble, but in the real
world a life of inactivity or suffering would never be called happy, even if in
schoolrooms people sometimes defend the position that a good man can be
happy while terribly afflicted (cf. 1153 b 1921). The theoretic life will be
considered later (in Book X), and Aristotle says nothing more about it here (1096
a 45). As for the life of moneymaking, this is carried on under the constraint of
need, whereas happiness (he implies) is free and unburdened
Aristotle is considering various standardly classified lives or lifestyles, each of
which is typified by pursuit of a certain goal. In this context, the pursuit amounts
to the claim that the life which it typifies is good or best, not merely that the goal
is best on that occasion.
Whereas Aristotle's arguments against honour, excellence and wealth depend on
conceptual analysis of the facts of each case, his argument against vulgar
pleasure also shows the influence of good upbringing.
Aristotle evidently regards the pleasure seekers as worse than merely
conceptually confused, and hence as worse than the others. What has this moral
attitude of his, presumed shared by his audience, to do with the question of the
nature of happiness? Simply that we cannot accept a proposed definition of
happiness (even if the proposal were to harbour no logical flaw) that finds

practical expression in the behaviour of people of a sort we ourselves could not

wish to beeven though, if we were of that sort, we should no doubt be
contented to be who we were.
It is necessary now, for the sake of clarity, to register the fact that Aristotle's
discussion swings between the notion of the supreme good as a certain sort of
life, and the notion of it as some element within a life which may dominate that
life in the logical sense of typifying it
no one is seriously suggesting that the happy life could consist of nothing but
pleasure or nothing but honour or excellence or excellent action or theoretic
activity; and perhaps everyone will agree that any kind of life that claims to be
happy will contain some measure of several of these goods, as well as other
good things such as health, prosperity, friends
The difference between the kinds of life surveyed in the preceding discussion
lies, rather, in the centrality of one or another of those narrower goods. They are
narrower in the sense that they cannot be literally omnipresent. But in some
sense they shed a light that is omnipresent. The central good of a life is the one
which, if that life were rightly regarded as happy, would be the source of its
being a happy life
only that his central good is seen by him as what would make his life happy,
because Aristotle insists that a happy life, to be happy, requires more than its
central good
Thus straightaway after offering his own definition of the central good, he says:
But it must be in a complete life. For one swallow does not make a spring, nor
does one day; nor similarly does one day or a short time make us blessed or
happy (1098 a 1820). This implies that the happy life must be of a decent span,
long enough for its potential to become actual; and that it must contain a variety
and a sufficiency of goods other than the central
According to this passage, a happy person is one who has a happy life (which is
not to say that he is necessarily happy all his life, for a person and his life can
cease (p.27) to be happy: cf. NE 1.10). Thus the happiness (1) of the happy
person (the abstract quality of his being happy) logically depends on his having a
happy life.
Hence for him happiness strictly signifies (4) the good that is central to the
happy life.14 Similarly when he speaks of the supreme good or the highest end.
These phrases may sometimes refer to the best sort of life, but in his usage they
generally refer to the good which is the inner focus of the best life

in Aristotle's view, that central good, which he identifies with virtuous activity, must itself
enter into the perfections which follow upon it; thus the pleasure is pleasure in that activity,
and the friendship friendship of the actively virtuous.
This construction enables Aristotle to explain why there are so many conflicting views on the
nature of happiness

Not only is it the case that the presence of each of the other goods in the good
life is explained by its relation to the central good ; but each of the others is
good because of its relation to the centre.
So it is not surprising that people confuse one or another of the peripheral goods
with the essence of happiness.
We seek happiness, and happiness is the goal that matters more than anything
else. Perhaps not everyone cares about being happy, but we do not think much
of those who do not
the special nuance of the word eudaimonia (happiness). Etymology points to
the notion of a favourable divinity steering a person's destiny. To be happy is to
be blessed (makarios), and the happy are said to be loved by the gods, though
whether this is cause or effect of their happiness may not be clear (cf. 1099 b 9
18; cf. 1179 a 2232)
). However, the gods themselves are said to be happy and blessed, as are those
immortalised pure souls whose abode is the Isles of the Blest. Perhaps because
of this connotation of divine perfection, nonhuman animals cannot be said to
seek eudaimonia, although they certainly pursue their good. Eudaimonia strictly
speaking cannot be ascribed to children either, according to Aristotle (1100 a 2).
These considerations make it easier for him to argue, as he will, that our central
good consists in rational activity
eudaimoniawhich cannot apply to creatures lacking in reason or only
potentially rational, and which therefore invites us to focus on what it is that
those creatures lack (cf. 1099 b 321100 a 4; 1139 a 20; 1178 b 2728).
However, he has to establish that equivalence. For even if we agree that
everyone seeks happiness, it does not follow that happiness is the uniquely
ultimate good. He begins by stressing that goods are ends (tel) of human
action, and goes on to observe that if there is a single end of everything we do,
then the good we are seeking (1097 a 15) would be that end, and if there are
several, it would be those several (2224
we do seem to have many ends, but some of these are sought only for the sake
of others, so they are not final
So the highest good must be a final end, and if there are several final ends, it
must be the most final
One end is more final than another if it is pursued for its own sake, and the other
only for the sake of something else, or if it is pursued only for its own sake
whereas the other is pursued for itself and also for something else (3034
on these grounds happiness seems most final of all, for we pursue it only for its
own sake, whereas other things, such as honour, pleasure, intelligence, and all
kinds of excellence, we pursue each for its own sake (for if nothing resulted from
them we (p.31) should still choose each of them), but also for the sake of
happiness, judging that through them we shall be happy (1097 a 30b 6).
At the opening of his first chapter, Aristotle stated that the end of every activity
is a good of one sort or another. Here, it seems to me, the emphasis is reversed.

Goods are ends; i.e., by and large they are to be had or maintained or made
possible only through purposeful effort

Happy Lives and the Highest Good: An Essay on Aristotles Nicomachean

Ethics
Gabriel Richardson Lear
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004, ix + 238 pages, $35 h.c. 0-69111466-8

http://www.pdcnet.org.ezproxy.st-andrews.ac.uk/collection/authorizedshow?
id=teachphil_2005_0028_0001_0088_0090&pdfname=teachphil_2005_0028_0001_0
092_0095.pdf&file_type=pdf&q=nicomachean ethics x
According to one widespread reading, all or at least a variety of choice-worthy ends
are (88) included in Aristotles concept of eudaimonia. A happy or flourishing life
somehow contains and exhibits them in such a way that each end is chosen for its
own sake and forms a part of the happy life. 89
A less common view holds that a happy life aims at one single end, and that lower
ends are chosen for the sake of the highest end. In favor of the latter reading are
Aristotles own statements in the NE, which seem to picture a single ultimate end for
human actions.
The goal of human practical activity is only an approximation or imitation of the
highest good, the truth contemplated in theoretical activity, but is nonetheless
chosen for its own sake as well as
for the sake of the telos it imitates.

On the Eudemian and Nicomachean Conceptions of Eudaimonia

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly
vol. 79, no. 3, pages 365 - 388, 2005, DOI: 10.5840/acpq200579327
http://www.pdcnet.org.ezproxy.st-andrews.ac.uk/collection/authorizedshow?
id=acpq_2005_0079_0003_0365_0388&pdfname=acpq_2005_0079_0003_0003_0026.pdf&
file_type=pdf&q=nicomachean ethics x
Hardie suggested that it is Aristotles occasional insight in the Nicomachean Ethics
that happiness or eudaimonia cannot consist in the pursuit of some single end such
as contemplation. Rather, he thought happiness must encompass several important
human aspirations including ethical, political, and philosophical ones. Th is has come
to be known as the inclusive conception of eudaimonia. 365

John Ackrill, taking Hardies lead, went on to argue that while Books I through IX
present a consistently inclusive view, it is only in X.7 and 8 that Aristotle
presents the exclusive view in which theria is the predominant activity. 366