Aristotle's Ethics: Eudaimonia, Virtue, and the Golden Mean in the Nicomachean Ethics

What is a good life? Not a pleasant life, nor a life successful in the eyes of others, but a life truly fulfilled, worthy of what we are. Aristotle’s answer to that question, set out in the Nicomachean Ethics, is among the most influential in history — and, after centuries of relative eclipse before the moralities of duty and of consequence-calculation, it has returned to the center of contemporary philosophical debate under the name “virtue ethics.” This article traces the core of that ethics: eudaimonia as the final end, virtue as habit and as a mean, practical wisdom, and friendship. For Aristotle’s metaphysics, see the article on substance; for his theory of justice, the article on justice.

1. Context: ethics as a practical science

The Nicomachean Ethics — so called by a tradition that links it to Nicomachus, Aristotle’s son (and probable editor) — gathers the philosopher’s lessons at the Lyceum, the school he founded in Athens in 335 BC. Aristotle had spent twenty years in the Academy of Plato, from whom he inherits much but from whom he departs on one decisive point: he rejects the idea of a separate “Good in itself,” located in a world of Forms, and seeks the human good in this world, in the concrete life of human beings.

This is why, for Aristotle, ethics is a practical science, not a theoretical one. Its aim is not merely to know what the good is but to become good. And it does not admit the same precision as mathematics: dealing with human actions, always variable and particular, it must content itself with truths that hold “for the most part” and in outline. To demand rigorous demonstration in ethics, Aristotle warns, is as mistaken as to accept merely probable arguments from a mathematician.

2. Eudaimonia: the final end

Every action, Aristotle observes at the opening of the work, aims at some good. But we pursue certain goods for the sake of others — money for the sake of health, health for the sake of activity, and so on. Is there a good we desire for its own sake and never for the sake of anything else? If there is, it will be the supreme good, the final end that gives meaning to all the rest. That end, Aristotle says, everyone names in the same way: eudaimonia.

The word is usually translated as “happiness,” but this can mislead. Eudaimonia is not a pleasant state of mind, a subjective feeling of contentment. It is rather the flourishing or fulfillment of a full human life — “living well and doing well.” This is why Aristotle characterizes it by two traits: it is final (always desired for its own sake) and self-sufficient (it suffices on its own, making life worth living and lacking nothing).

Aristotle then examines the common candidates for the supreme good and dismisses them one by one: the life of pleasure belongs to animals; honor depends too much on those who bestow it, not on us; wealth is a mere means, never an end. None of these satisfies the criteria of finality and self-sufficiency.

3. The function argument (ergon)

How, then, are we to determine what eudaimonia consists in? Aristotle resorts to the celebrated function argument (ergon). Just as we recognize a good flute-player or a good sculptor by performing well the activity proper to them, we must ask what the characteristic function of a human being is — what it, and it alone, does.

It cannot be mere life (shared with plants), nor sentient life (shared with animals). What is proper to humans is the activity of the rational part of the soul. The human good therefore consists in the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue (aretē) — and, if there are several virtues, in accordance with the best and most complete of them — exercised over a whole life. Aristotle adds a memorable proviso: just as “one swallow does not make a summer,” neither does a single day or a short period make anyone happy. Eudaimonia is the work of a lifetime.

Note a point often forgotten: Aristotle is no ascetic. Although virtue is the core of the good life, he grants that it also requires certain external goods — health, friends, sufficient resources, and even some luck — for it is hard to act well when deprived of everything.

4. Virtue as habit: ethics and ethos

Moral virtue, Aristotle teaches, is not given to us by nature, nor is it contrary to nature: we are born with the capacity to acquire it, and we develop it through habit (ethos — from which the very word “ethics” derives). We learn the arts by practicing them: we become builders by building, lyre-players by playing. In the same way, we become just by doing just acts, courageous by doing courageous acts, temperate by practicing temperance. Virtue is thus a stable disposition (hexis) of character, forged by the repetition of good actions until acting well becomes second nature.

From this follows an important pedagogical thesis: moral formation begins early and depends on the education of habits and feelings. It is not enough to know what is good; one must take pleasure in doing it. The virtuous person does not act well grudgingly, struggling against his inclinations — he enjoys acting well. Virtue concerns both actions and passions: it is a matter of feeling the right emotions, in the right measure, at the right time, toward the right people.

5. Virtue as a mean (mesotes)

Here comes the most famous doctrine of Aristotelian ethics: virtue as a mean (mesotes). Moral virtue is a middle between two vices — one of excess, the other of deficiency. Take courage: it is the mean between cowardice (a deficiency of boldness before danger) and rashness (an excess). Temperance lies between insensibility and self-indulgence; generosity, between stinginess and prodigality; proper pride, between pusillanimity and vanity.

It is crucial to understand what this “mean” means — and what it does not mean. It is not an arithmetic average, the same for everyone. The mean is relative to us: it depends on the person, the situation, the circumstances. The amount of food suitable for an athlete is not the same as for a beginner. The mean is determined by right reason, that is, as the person of practical wisdom would determine it. And the mean is itself, in another respect, an extreme of excellence: virtue is a mean between vices, but, with respect to the good and the right, it is the highest point.

Aristotle is careful to note the limits of the doctrine: not every action or passion admits of a mean. There are acts and feelings that carry wickedness in their very name — murder, theft, envy, spite — and that are always wrong, with no “right measure” in which to commit them.

6. Practical wisdom (phronesis)

Who determines, in each concrete case, where the mean lies? This is where practical wisdom or prudence (phronesis) comes in, the most important of the intellectual virtues for the ethical life. Phronesis is the capacity to deliberate well about what is good and advantageous for a good life in general, and to discern, in the particularity of the situation, the right action. It is not to be confused with theoretical wisdom (sophia), which deals with necessary and eternal truths; practical wisdom deals with the contingent, with what can be otherwise, with the singular.

Aristotle establishes a reciprocal bond between moral virtue and practical wisdom: there is no full moral virtue without practical wisdom (for it is this that hits the target), and no practical wisdom without moral virtue (for a corrupt character distorts the very perception of what is good). The person of practical wisdom (phronimos) thus becomes the living measure of right action — the one whose experienced judgment serves as a standard when general rules do not suffice.

7. Responsibility, choice, and weakness of will

For an action to be praised or blamed, it must be voluntary. Aristotle analyzes the conditions of responsibility (Nicomachean Ethics, Book III): actions done under external compulsion or through ignorance of relevant circumstances are involuntary. At the center of moral action stands choice (prohairesis), a “deliberate desire” — the fruit of reason deliberating about means and of desire aiming at the end.

Aristotle also confronts a classic problem: akrasia, weakness or incontinence of the will — acting against one’s own judgment about what is best. Socrates had denied that this was possible: no one errs knowingly; all vice would be ignorance. Aristotle, more attentive to experience, recognizes that we do in fact yield to the passions against what we know to be good, and offers a subtle explanation: at the moment of action, the incontinent person’s knowledge is as if “clouded” by passion, resembling the knowledge of someone drunk or asleep.

8. Friendship and the contemplative life

Two themes crown the work. First, friendship (philia), to which Aristotle devotes two entire books — a sign of how essential he considers it to the good life. He distinguishes three kinds: friendship of utility and of pleasure, both unstable because they cease when the benefit or the enjoyment ceases; and perfect friendship, founded on virtue, between good people who wish each other well for what each one is. Only this kind is lasting, and in it the friend is like “another self.”

Finally, in Book X, Aristotle identifies the highest form of eudaimonia with the contemplative life (theoria): the activity of what is most divine in us, the intellect (nous), exercised on the highest truths. Contemplation is the most self-sufficient, continuous, and pleasant of activities, and therefore the happiest. Here one of the work’s greatest interpretive controversies opens up: is there a tension between this exaltation of the theoretical life and the defense, throughout the work, of the practical and political life of the moral virtues? Interpreters divide between an “intellectualist” reading (contemplation as the supreme and exclusive happiness) and an “inclusive” reading (the happy life as a whole encompassing moral virtue and contemplation).

Critical analysis

Aristotelian ethics has been the object of persistent objections. The doctrine of the mean, though intuitive, is accused of vagueness: it says we should act with the right measure, but the content of that measure is referred to the judgment of the person of practical wisdom — which, for critics, is nearly circular (we are referred to the virtuous person in order to know what virtue is). Aristotle would reply that this is no defect but an honest acknowledgment that ethics admits no algorithm: moral discernment is a skill, not the application of a formula.

There is also the problem of culturally dependent virtues: the “magnanimity” of the Nicomachean Ethics reflects the aristocratic values of Classical Athens, and some attitudes Aristotle praises sound, today, dated or elitist (to say nothing of his positions on slavery and women, indefensible by contemporary standards). Finally, the centrality of contemplation has led some to see in Aristotelian ethics an overly intellectual ideal of human life.

Legacy

The influence of Aristotle’s ethics is incalculable. It shaped Hellenistic ethics — Stoicism argues with it about the place of virtue and of external goods — and was incorporated into Christian theology by Thomas Aquinas, who fused it with the doctrine of the theological virtues. After a long period in which the modern moralities of duty (Kant) and utility (utilitarianism) dominated the scene, virtue ethics resurged vigorously in the twentieth century. The landmark was Elizabeth Anscombe’s essay “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958), which called for a return to an ethics of character; it was followed by Philippa Foot, Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue, 1981), Martha Nussbaum, and Rosalind Hursthouse. Today the Aristotelian question — not “what rule should I follow?” but “what kind of person should I be?” — is once again at the heart of moral philosophy.

1. Context: ethics as a practical science#

2. Eudaimonia: the final end#

3. The function argument (ergon)#

4. Virtue as habit: ethics and ethos#

5. Virtue as a mean (mesotes)#

6. Practical wisdom (phronesis)#

7. Responsibility, choice, and weakness of will#

8. Friendship and the contemplative life#

Critical analysis#

Legacy#

Recommended reading#