Aristotle

Happiness is virtuous action in accordance with the human function, which is to reason. It is complete and self-sufficient. It is sought only as an end, not for the sake of getting something else. It requires virtue and is promoted by certain external goods including good friendship, some degree of financial stability, not being hideous, not having evil children, and other general good fortune.

Virtue is the state that decides. It consists of a mean relative to us. It gives us our ability to function. By repetitive action on the mean, virtues are acquired in the non-rational part of the soul that is accessible to reason. They must be acquired in the non-rational part of the soul that is accessible to reason because the non-rational part of the soul that is inaccessible to reason serves only to maintain autonomic body functions such as blood pressure and animal appetites.

Repetitive action on the mean helps one to acquire prudence, which results in virtues. Prudence is choosing the mean because experience has shown it best promotes happiness. Temperance is the mean of pleasure that is chosen because of prudence.

People do wrong for three reasons. They are either ignorant of the universal, ignorant of the particular, or incontinent. People should be held morally responsible when they are ignorant of the universal because since it is a universal, to be ignorant of it, they must ignore it. Incontinent people must also be held morally responsible since they have knowingly done wrong.

Prudence is the state of grasping the truth, involving reason, and concerned with action about things that are good or bad for a human being. Prudence is not something one can teach to others by giving them an instruction manual. They must experience the human life to acquire prudence.

Prudence is different from craft knowledge because having prudence allows one to make good decisions about living life in general, whereas having craft knowledge allows one to make good decisions to promote the purpose of the craft of which one has knowledge. Prudence is different from wisdom because wisdom is about understanding why an action is good or bad, not just that it is good or bad.

Friendships can be incomplete or complete. Incomplete ones include those for utility or pleasure. Complete friendships are between virtuous people who each wish good to the other for the other's own sake.

Friendships are among the external goods that help promote happiness. Complete friendships do this best. A good person needs someone to which to do good because happiness is an activity. This person the good person does good to must be good as well or it and the person are not entirely good. If someone "benefits" another in a way that helps the "benefited" person commit base actions, it is certainly not good.

A right kind of polis is necessary to make people be decent because people who are decent by nature are rare. Most find fine actions painful by nature and must be forced by law to do them to avoid punishment. Further, those who are decent by nature can easily be corrupted in a corrupt polis. If injustice is not outlawed, one must do injustice to escape injustice being done to oneself. (It may be of interest to the reader that my professor seemed to think something in this paragraph was not how Aristotle saw it. However, to me it seems to be a logical explanation for his opinion that the right kind of polis is necessary to make people be decent. Maybe I should have studied harder?)


Written October 21, 2002