The Nicomachean Ethics
More Than Just Bread - The Good Society
What Does It Mean to Live Well?
More than two thousand years ago, Aristotle asked a question that remains at the centre of human life:
What does it mean to live well?
In The Nicomachean Ethics, he begins with a simple idea. Everything we do seems to aim at some good. Medicine aims at health. Strategy aims at victory.
Building aims at producing a house. But if we keep asking why we want these things, we eventually reach a deeper question:
Is there something we want simply for itself, and not as a way of getting something else?
For Aristotle, the answer is happiness.
But by happiness he does not mean simply feeling happy, enjoying pleasure or having an easy life. The Greek idea behind his argument, eudaimonia, is closer to living well, doing well and making a good life of one’s whole existence.
This distinction is important.
People often connect happiness with pleasure, wealth or honour. Aristotle examines each of these possibilities. Pleasure may be enjoyable, but a life built only around pleasure seems too limited. Honour depends partly on other people, because it is they who give it to us. Wealth cannot be the final purpose of life because money is useful mainly for what it allows us to obtain.
Happiness is different.
We want many things because we believe they will make us happy. But we do not normally seek happiness in order to obtain something else. Aristotle therefore describes it as something final and, in an important sense, self-sufficient.
But this creates another question.
What actually makes a human life good?
Aristotle looks at what is distinctive about human beings. Plants live and grow. Animals also feel and perceive. Human beings, however, have the capacity to reason.
A good human life, therefore, must involve using this capacity well. Happiness is not simply something we possess or feel. It comes through activity, through living and acting in accordance with virtue or excellence.
This means that being a good person is not simply a matter of having good intentions.
We have to act.
Aristotle compares this with the Olympic Games. The prize does not go simply to the strongest or most beautiful people. It goes to those who actually compete. In the same way, the good things of life belong to those who put virtue into practice.
This brings us to one of Aristotle’s best-known ideas: the mean between extremes.
In many areas of life, he argues, we can have too much or too little of something. Both extremes may lead us away from good judgement.
Courage, for example, concerns how we respond to fear and confidence. Temperance concerns pleasure. Generosity concerns giving and receiving. Good character requires us to find an appropriate balance.
But Aristotle’s “mean” should not be understood as simply choosing the middle in every situation.
There is no mathematical formula.
The right response depends on the person, the circumstances, the time, the reason for acting and the way the action is carried out. Aristotle says that it is easy to become angry or to spend money. The difficult thing is to do so towards the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, for the right reason and in the right way.
This is why being good is difficult.
Good judgement requires practice, experience and character. It requires us to recognise both excess and deficiency and to choose wisely between them.
Aristotle also makes another important point. A good life cannot be judged from a single action or a single day. Happiness concerns a life as a whole. One good moment does not make a good life, just as one difficult moment does not necessarily destroy it.
Nor does Aristotle completely ignore the world around us. He recognises that external circumstances matter. Friends, resources and favourable conditions can help people act well. A good life therefore involves both character and the circumstances in which character must operate.
The questions raised by this ancient text remain remarkably current.
What do we really mean by happiness?
Is a successful life measured by pleasure, money, recognition or something deeper?
Is it enough to know what is good, or must goodness always be expressed through action?
Can we develop good judgement without practising it?
How do we recognise the right balance between too much and too little?
And perhaps most importantly:
Do our everyday choices gradually shape the kind of person we become?
Aristotle does not offer us a simple recipe for happiness.
He offers something more demanding.
A good life is not something that simply happens to us. It is something we build through our choices, our actions and our character, over an entire lifetime.
Perhaps, then, the question is not simply “Am I happy?”
It may be:
“Am I learning how to live well?”
- Artemis Orphanou, Director, Agora Dialogue
- Eva Ierides, Contributor, Agora Dialogue
- Dinos Toumazos, Chief Executive Officer, Agora Dialogue