Happiness In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethic

The main idea of Aristotle’s Nicomachean ethic is that happiness is the end of all human beings’ action, which in today, still qualified to be a big idea. The whole society today is getting better comparing with the ancient time from all aspects, such as technology, culture or economic. But when we tend to the measure the level of happiness, it seems that people nowadays are not tending happier than the era of material scarcity; meanwhile, there is an increasing number of people try to find out what the true happiness is and also how to attain it. Besides the idea of Nicomachean, Aristotle also has a theory called Telos, which means ultimate purpose. As the view of Aristotle, happiness is what we aim at in the end, which is our telos. This
idea of Nicomachean implies that happiness essentially is not a state of being, or a feeling, but an action of living well last a lifetime. In addition, a person does not do things in order to be happy, when they do things is their pleasure and happiness.
Aristotle thought every action conducted by human being which is aiming at some good. And this good must be a self-sufficient thing and independent from the actions undertaken, because if not, the actions which aim to some kinds of good would not get to the end. According to this view, Aristotle first thought political science should be this ultimate good of human’s action, whereas political is made to regulate citizen’s behavior and to influence it into a good way, so it obviously is not the end we expected. Then, Aristotle considered the happiness as human’s ultimate goal of all actions. First, happiness is self-sufficient and all actions undertaken for the sake of happiness, which is not like political science that aims at something else. However, then, Aristotle realized that different people have different perspectives of happiness; some people believe that happiness is virtue, and others thinks is honor, both of these two can be regarded as the end of political life. Honor is not a thing that can be controlled by person who receive it but the person who grant it. On the other hand, we believe good will accompany a person through his/her whole life, so obviously that virtue is better to
treated as happiness, because there is nothing more than virtuous activities can be much permanent in one’s whole life and a happy man voluntarily spend his/her whole life to do virtuous activities. Moreover, the people who are virtuous, they have a much higher level of enduring the misfortune. Aristotle also claimed that happiness only can be defined in one’s completed life, because life changes all the time, when one person suffer great misfortune in his old life, even he/she is happy during all the other time through his/her life, it is hard to say that this person is happiness -- the most prosperous may fall into great misfortune in old age. This can draw a conclusion that we cannot decide a man is happy or not as long as he/she alive. However, even they died, there are also reverses can happen due to external factor of happiness, for instance, whether good or not of their descendants also influence their happiness. The great misfortune will definitely covered the happiness of this person. When considered what really the good or the happiness is, Aristotle divided it into three types, external, soul related and the body. We know that virtue is soul related factors of happiness. A virtuous person can create an environment which is full of good. There is also external factor of happiness, which can be regarded as an instrument to help us to be noble. Aristotle believed that the people who are born disable or who are childless, they have less chance to reach happiness or ultimate good.
Objection of one of Aristotle’s argument – happiness of one person only can be defined after he/she completed their whole life. (You object and Aristotle responds.)
Aristotle believed that the one’s happiness only can be decided after a completed life.
The fundamental idea of this is that happiness is not a state or just a feeling, but it is ultimate goal of one’s whole life. So he believed that a little boy definitely will not be happy, because his age is too young and also has no ability of using instrument to help him achieve happiness. As what Aristotle believed that happiness is virtue, as a infant, he/she totally has no idea of virtue, so have no chance to get in touch with happiness. When infant grow up to be a child, most of them still do not know specifically what is virtue, till as adolescent, the start build a system of moral attitude, they start getting to know virtue and behave virtuously. Because human in different stages of life have different acknowledge of virtue, so is too broad if we just consider whole life period to decide one is happy or not. Therefore in my opinion, it is better to decide whether a person is happy or not during each stages of life, which are infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, cause if we follow the idea of Aristotle that happiness is virtue, the whole period in life to judge if one is happy or not is only the period after childhood (infant and child have no idea about moral (virtue), which actually is not whole-life in Aristotle’s theory. For example, as an infant, knowing nothing about virtue, so there is no point to decide whether he/she is happy or not. Infants have no conscious of
beauty and ugliness, so maybe he/she is ugly (which motioned by Aristotle as external element of happiness), which may make he/she unhappy when they big enough to understand this. But at the stage as a baby, they do not feel unhappy about their appearance. What happen in the future cannot influence their happiness now. For some people regard honor as happiness (Aristotle did not disagree with this idea, he just thought virtue would be better), this idea is certainly not happened in infant stage, they are supposed to occur at the stage of adult. They start getting in touch with political science, beginning to pursuit honor. Therefore at this stage, gaining of honor can lead them to be happy. In my point of views, happiness still is not a feeling, but is ultimate goal of human beings. What’s the different with Aristotle is that I divide the completed life into several completed stages in life. From the point of view of Aristotle, he treated happiness as whole life conducting virtuous activities. There are some prerequisites of happiness, such as born in a harmony family, but there is also another conditions required to gain ultimate happiness, which is the ability of using instrument to reach happiness, such as what we mentioned before – political science, which help citizens to behave virtuously and gain happiness. Because child has no ability to use these instruments, so they cannot gain ultimately happiness. Aristotle believe that entire period of life are interrelated. So the big misfortune in the old life will cover the happiness in the early life.