Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: The Virtue Of True Happiness

In book one of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle establishes his belief that in order for humans beings to achieve true happiness, they should try to find balance in certain aspects of their life called virtues. To define true happiness, Aristotle formulates that whatever happiness is, it must be the highest good (49). In other words, Aristotle is indicating that whatever we do in life, we do for the sake of happiness. Furthermore, true happiness is the apogee of our intentions. Once we achieve true happiness, no further measures can be taken to move past it (51). After it has been established that happiness is to be considered the highest good, the philosopher correlates good to funtion. In order for something to be good, it must be well-aligned
with its function. Thus, the height of goodness can be reached by functioning in the optimal way (51). For example, the highest good for a mop would be to clean the floor well, and the highest good for a bomb would be to kill all the bad guys.
Consequently, if we can address the function of humanity, we can distinguish what its highest good is, which will reveal the key to happiness. Quickly dismissing that humans are “good-for-nothing,” Aristotle works out that the function of humans is conformity between the soul and what is called rational principle (52). The rational principle refers to what Aristotle later outlines as the virtues which are a mean or middle ground for characteristics of a soul. Moreover, happiness can be achieved through the continuous conformation to said qualities. One of the spheres or spectra that Aristotle goes on to write about is that of confidence and fear. This can be applied to the the commander in chief of the armed forces. The president needs to find the mean of this spectrum in courage. An overly-confident president will live a rash lifestyle leading to the regret of decisions he or she made without consultation. Yet, a cowardice president will also be full of regret due to the decisions he has failed to make. Thus, if he wants to be complacent in his choices he needs to live a life in the
middle. According to Aristotle, a life of happiness is one lived through the continuous alignment of one’s life to these virtues. Aristotle appears to find the highest good as performance based; yet, not all things appear to achieve any sort of good by performing their function.
In contrast to Aristotle’s main premise that the highest good is achieved through maximization of something’s function, things designed for evil do not seem to follow this pattern. Bringing back the example of a bomb’s function, we see that the bomb does no good. Bombs kill human beings, which is often seen as the epitope of evil. The more devastation a bomb can cause, the more effective the bomb is at fulfilling its purpose. Following Aristotle’s ideology would lead one to believe that the most destructive bomb -- a “good” bomb -- would be achieving the highest good. Some might say that the function of a bomb is actually to end wars, save lives, or using it for a greater good; however, this is not something we would hear Aristotle agree to. He would believe that killing shows lack of virtue, thus not a part of a positive life. We find the issue to be that something good at it’s job is not necessarily good in general. The premise for a highest good of humanity does not take into account that some things are purposefully evil. If the purpose of humankind is something that leads to the destruction of all other forms of life, then can realizing this purpose actually be a good? Therefore, Aristotle’s premise that the highest good is the complete realization of purpose is faulty because something that is good at what it does is not
necessarily good by virtue. In analyzing this criticism, Aristotle may go about saying that when referring to the highest good of anything we are referencing only those things which occur naturally. Bombs and other manmade weapons of destruction dedicated to evil works would then be excluded from consideration of their highest good. Aristotle may go as far as to say that things that occur naturally serve no real evil. In a world filled with parasites and pathogens, one would think that Aristotle would be easily refuted with such a weak argument. Yet, I believe Aristotle would lead us down a line of questioning regarding what it means for a living thing to be achieving its good. He may argue that this good does not actually refer to morality as it may in humans. Instead, Aristotle could argue that something achieving its highest good insures the continuation of the thing performing the good. From a species standpoint, this could mean the continuation of the species and not just the organism. Therefore, a tapeworm is achieving its highest good by being a good parasite through producing many offspring to be released in the intestine. This could potentially be applied to the nonliving, manmade world. Even in the case of bombs, a bomb that does well will increase the likelihood that another bomb like it will be created. However, I don’t think that Aristotle would take an argument this far. Thus, potentially good could be related to survivorship in such cases where the object of discussion is not complex enough to be driven by happiness. The highest good would be what all actions are aimed at. In humans, this would be happiness. In the rest of the living world, the goal is primarily to flourish and produce offspring.