Aristotle’s Eudaimonia and Areté
The summum bonum for Aristotle is eudaimonia, translated approximately as “flourishing” or “happiness”. Happiness is a deceptively simple term, more widely used, overused, and abused in the modern world than deeply understood. The classical notion of happiness is emphatically not a psychological state of elation. It does not consist in contentment produced by contingent states of affairs in possessing wealth, honor, or pleasure. In contrast, for Aristotle, true happiness is a particular dynamic activity of the human soul in accord with areté (virtue) (Aristotle 2013, 615–629). Three argumentative moves build toward this conclusion: the function argument, the account of habituation, and the doctrine of the mean.
Happiness is not “feeling good” but “living and doing well.” All human actions (in art, science, craft, or politics) aim at their respective good. This “good” is to be understood as telos, i.e., that which the activity is aiming at. There must also be one final good sought entirely for its own sake rather than as a means to anything else, and this ultimate end is eudaimonia. Just as a flautist performs well by exercising the capacity that makes her a flautist, a human being lives well by exercising the distinctly human faculties. Since the nutritive and perceptual capacities are shared with plants and animals, respectively, what remains exclusively human is “activity of the soul in accord with reason”. Happiness is therefore not a static possession but an active and sustained exercise of rational capacities over a complete life. It follows that moral perfection is domesticated within the ordinary human lifespan, foreclosing the infinite horizon that Kant envisaged where holiness is only asymptotically approached.
Virtues of character are neither innate nor bestowed antinatally. We can learn, foster, and cultivate them through the formation of habits. Consider, for example, the analogy of art and craft: one becomes a builder by building and a harpist by playing the harp. This kind of development is not question-begging. It goes beyond mere imitation because a man acting virtuously does so deliberately, and out of a consistent and stable temperament. To act virtuously by happenstance or by algorithmic routine is not true virtue. Virtuous action is defined not by resisting inclination (unlike Kant's categorical imperative) but by acting from well-cultivated inclination. This developmental picture is inseparable from political life because habituation requires the right upbringing and community, since virtues like generosity are constitutively relational and cannot be practiced in isolation (generosity requires a giver and a receiver).
Virtue is a particular kind of disposition flanked by its extreme versions that are the vices. Feelings and actions, like temper, can be out of balance, in excess, or in a healthy middle state. The brave person is neither reckless nor cowardly; the temperate person is neither self-indulgent nor insensible. This mean is not arithmetic but qualitative and relative to the agent, defined by what the prudent person (phronimos) would subscribe to in a given situation, much as a trainer prescribes a diet relative to the athlete's constitution, proclivities (sometimes needing corrections), and needs. Some actions, however, such as murder and adultery, admit of no mean, since their very names already include baseness. There is no right middle way, in this respect, concerning them.
Critique
Aristotle’s virtue ethics emphasizes an individual’s moral and character formation as central to a good life. It offers a way through the impasse of thin modern ethics suspended between tasking deontology, ethical egoism, and the reductive calculus of utilitarianism. The archer desires to aim at the bullseye and has the reasoning and enabling faculties in her soul. However, there are shortcomings in human nature and will, which Aristotle himself notices in the incontinent man. The precarious balancing act in the spectrum of virtue leaves her efforts skewed and her spirit weary. She discerns what is right but ends up doing otherwise, implying that the energy needed to draw the bowstring must come outside the naturalistic framework. This is the Christian diagnosis of sin (hamartia) or “missing the mark.” Sin, unlike uninformed mistakes, is caused not only by a lack of knowledge about what one should aim at. It is an inherent brokenness of the human spirit that cannot be fixed by good intentions, laws, or habits. Christian spirituality does not eliminate our nature but perfects it. Eudaimonism provides excellent resources to thicken morality, but it also prompts us to look beyond self-moralism. Thomas Aquinas clarifies this: Aristotle is not to be refuted but completed. His teleology must be fulfilled in God, and His Spirit empowered by divine grace.