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. ...