Happiness as a Virtuous Activity of the Soul
TL;DR: Aristotle taught that happiness and moral goodness go together. If you act virtuously, you’ll be happy! If you act badly, you won’t. How do we obtain moral goodness? By doing good things; by practicing being good.
Cover art by Diana Mariño
Aristotle and Happiness
Very early in his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle declared that happiness is a “first principle,” (EN I.8, 1102a3), or “archai.”
This places it among the most fundamental of principles; something like the foundation of a building upon which everything else rests.
Happiness is the “supreme good,” wrote Aristotle; something “perfect and self-sufficient.”
If left unexplored, this assertion would amount to a platitude on par with Bentham’s declarative listing of the types of pleasure and pain, which we shall talk about in a later post. Aristotle recognizes this (EN I.7, 1097b22), and thus goes deeper. What Aristotle proposes in place of platitudes is that “..happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with perfect virtue.” (EN I.8, 1102a5).
Or in even more poetically inviting terms: that happiness is a “virtuous activity of the soul.” (EN I.9, 1099b25).
Immediately, one notes the alluring beauty of this phrase. While Jeremy Bentham’s principle of utilitarianism begins with the premise that we are simply subjects of the “sovereign masters” of pleasure and pain, Aristotle tells us that our happiness is a “virtuous activity of the soul.”
The three operative words in this definition -- “virtuous,” “activity,” “soul” -- have intricate implications; each merits contemplation. For here we are entering the territory of the expansive notion of human happiness and well-being the ancient Greeks called eudaimonia.
Why Do We Study Ethics?
Ethics, to Aristotle, was a “practical science,” as opposed to a theoretical one. We study it, he taught, not to speculate on what “goodness” might mean in the abstract, but instead to become good people (NE II.2,1103b28).
Thus, the “activity,” to which Aristotle refers in his definition of happiness, is human activity. It means that happiness requires action, movement, decision, and doing. Further, it is a ceaseless process, the sort of action one must carry out constantly over the course of a lifetime. Nor is it just any action, but “virtuous” action.1
“…the happy person will be happy throughout his or her life; because they will spend all their time, or the most time of any person, in virtuous conduct and contemplation.” (EN I.10, 1100b19).
Moral Virtue is a Matter of Practice
What, precisely, does the old master mean by “virtue?”
You are likely to sense that his answers resonate with your personal views; that they are lessons a parent would want to pass on to his or her child. Further, the answers will also sound strikingly familiar: they are not that far afield from Adam Smith’s “moral sentiments,” the ones he reflected on right around the same 18th century times that Bentham was launching the philosophy of utilitarianism in his classic, Principles of Morals and Legislation.
There are two types of virtues, Aristotle teaches: intellectual and moral. The difference between them is simply the means of their acquisition: intellectual virtues grow by instruction, while moral goodness (ethos) is the result of habit; that is, while we are constituted by nature to receive these virtues, their full development is due to practice (NE II.1, 1103a15-20).
The latter point is not complicated. It is a variant on the dictum that “practice makes perfect,” and is of such spiritual common sense that it is repeated elsewhere in our sacred texts:
“As a person acts, so he or she becomes in life. Those who do good become good; those who do harm become bad. Good deeds make one pure; bad deeds make one impure.”
Hinduism, Upanishads
“For verily, good deeds drive away evil deeds; this is a reminder to all who bear God in mind.” Islam, Quran 11:114.
Thus Aristotle tells us that:
“We become just by performing just acts, temperate by performing temperate ones, brave by performing brave ones... It is the way we have in our dealings with other people that makes us just or unjust… So it is a matter of no little importance what sort of habits we form from the earliest age – it makes a vast difference, or rather, all the difference in the world.” (EN II.1, 1103b).
Next week, we’ll explore Aristotle’s famous “Doctrine of the Mean,” and the essential guidance it provides for virtuous behavior.
I have tried for gender neutral language in quoting Aristotle and the other ancient texts in this and other post, replacing masculine pronouns with either “person,” “people,” “he and she,” “him and her,” or “they.” This in the hopes that the wisdom of these texts shall resonate more fully with a broader audience.