Ok, so Aristotle’s Nicomachean ethics is a little hard to digest. I had a hard time trying to grasp a few of his concepts. But after a few lectures, it starts to make sense. What I gathered so far from this book is that Aristotle is teaching us human beings the art of living, and how to live the good life.
In book one, chapter one it describes how an intentional action leads to a telos; which means an end, goal, aim, or purpose. Every intentional action we make is aiming at something good, and it may or may not be a selfish good. Everything we do on purpose is good for somebody. This reminds me of the typical scenario in wars. A bomb is being thrown at many soldiers and one courageous soldier risks his life and covers the bomb with his body in order to save others lives. This isn’t a selfish good. The end result is not good for him, but good for others. But there is a difference among ends; some are activities, others are products apart from the activities that produce them. Activities an action is good whereas products is not necessarily good and may give you a different end product. One action can lead to a sequence of many ends. But ultimately the chain stops (1094 a20) and we achieve the chief good. For me, in attending college, I seek to get a degree so I can get a good job and live comfortably. The end result, living comfortably, would make me happy which is my chief good. But there are many products from the action of attending college. Such as, following my course requirements made me aware of different topics that educated me on different aspects of life and also gave me the tools to endure situations in life. But that wasn’t my intended goal; it just came along with trying to reach my chief good. Chief good= happiness= living well, doing well, and flourishing=healthy soul. Some equation right? Feels like I’m in math class now. Anyway, but people have different opinions on what happiness is to them. Christians believe that just existence is being happy. Many people equate happiness with pleasure. Aristotle says happiness is not a feeling but an objective fact. Acting well is when you’re happy. Doing the right thing is happiness. “For a single swallow does not make spring, nor does a single day; in the same way, neither does a single day, short time, make a man blessed.” You must act well throughout a long period of time to achieve happiness. Happiness can only be achieved in complete excellence and living a complete life (p. 105 1100a1). So wait a minute, according to Aristotle I’m not happy. When I tell people I am living a happy life, it is not true? I have to die first to know if I lived a happy life? Wow, seems depressing to me. I somewhat disagree but I see what he is saying. I have to look at the time line of my life (which is still going on) to judge if I was happy. Because I don’t know if later in life something will cause me to be unhappy. Well my solution is I’ll just tell people I’m happy with my life right now for the time being :) Lol.
An issue that I wanted to also discuss is the differences of happiness between Plato and Aristotle. Plato believes your choices make you happy and Aristotle believes it is not up to your choices only, but fate as well. Hmmm.. I’m kind of stuck in the middle with this. To me it can go both ways. At first I was with Plato because I’ve been in a situation where I was very ill; this was a life and death situation. But that did not lead me to become a worse person, and I was still happy even though I had an unfortunate illness. Most people would have been unhappy but I wasn’t. Ultimately staying happy kept me alive and made me better. But I’ve seen somebody who was considered “good” by everybody lose everything in a blink of an eye. Even though he had faith in God, he was still unhappy. The loss of all his prized possessions in life harmed him. *sigh* So I can see why the meaning of happiness is so hard to grasp. What do y’all think??
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