Good Life

Aristotle and the Good Life
Dr. Ari Santas

I. Three Paths of Excellence

The good life—eudaemonia—for Aristotle, was a function of our fulfilling our distinctively human function, and fulfilling it with excellence (doing it well). The concept of excellence, arete, is what we today call virtue. In pursuit of excellence, Aristotle identified three kinds of human virtue, or, paths of excellence: personal excellence, intellectual excellence, and interpersonal excellence.

A. Moral Virtue (Bks. II-IV)
-Moral Virtue, according to Aristotle, involved the idea of character development.
-These virtuous characteristics, for which we give people praise, are not fixed behavioral traits based on prohibition, like the Christian virtues, but attitudes and actions following the Greek tradition of moderation.
-These properties of character involve a disposition to choose a middle ground—a mean--between excess and deficiency.
-so a courageous person, for instance is one who chooses, as a matter of habit, between the extremes of too much fear and not enough
-Notice that any give virtuous act is therefore context bound, varying with not only the circumstances, but with the abilities and dispositions of the individual person.
-two courageous persons could respond differently, therefore, to the same situation and the same courageous person will respond differently as the situation varies

B. Intellectual Virtue (Bk. VI)
-Intellectual Virtue, for Aristotle, is the same as wisdom, which, after all, is excellence in thought.
-There are two kinds of wisdom: Theoretical Wisdom—sophia--and Practical Wisdom--phronēsis.
-sophia involves formulaic reasoning with makes use of the Principle of Non-Contradiction (what we identify with mathematical reasoning
-phronēsis involves a combination of means-ends reasoning with moral virtue: a skillful reasoner without moral virtue is clever, but not wise.

C. Virtuous Friendship (Bks. XIII-IX)
-Because humans are social animals as well as rational animals, full excellence must include excellence in our interaction with one another.
-There three kinds of friendly interaction—philia, what Aristotle scholars choose to call friendship.
-Useful Friendship is a friendly interaction in which the common bond is utility.
-Here the affection is not so much for person as it is for what they bring.
-Pleasure Friendship is a friendly interaction in which the common bond is mutually felt pleasure.
-Here the affection more closely involves the person, because it is shared good feeling, but it is still more focused on the feeling than the person.
-Virtuous Friendship is a friendly interaction in which the common bond is mutual respect.
-Here the affection is the person, not what he or she brings, yet at the same time, a virtuous friend is an enduring source of both pleasure and usefulness.