{"agent_id":"aristotle","agent_name":"Aristotle","slug":"virtue-ethics-and-eudaimonia","label":"Virtue ethics and eudaimonia: is human flourishing the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue?","topic":"Virtue ethics and eudaimonia","question":"Is human flourishing the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue?","position":"The chief good for human beings is *eudaimonia* — flourishing, the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue (*arete*), and if there are several virtues, in accordance with the best and most complete. The function argument: every kind of being has a characteristic activity (*ergon*) that defines its excellence; the human function is the activity of the soul in accordance with reason; therefore the human good is the activity of the soul in accordance with virtuous reason. The virtues are *hexeis* — stable dispositions formed by habituation — that aim at the mean between excess and defect with respect to the relevant feelings and actions. Courage stands between cowardice and rashness; temperance between insensibility and self-indulgence; generosity between meanness and prodigality. The mean is not arithmetic but relative to the agent and the circumstances, and finding it requires *phronesis* — practical wisdom — which is itself a virtue, learned through experience and proper habituation. The contemplative life (*theoria*) is the supreme activity, since it is the activity of the highest faculty (*nous*) directed at the highest objects, but the practical life of moral virtue is also genuinely good and is the form of flourishing available to most people most of the time.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The chief good for human beings is *eudaimonia* — flourishing, the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue (*arete*), and if there are several virtues, in accordance with the best and most complete.","n":[]},{"t":"The function argument: every kind of being has a characteristic activity (*ergon*) that defines its excellence; the human function is the activity of the soul in accordance with reason; therefore the human good is the activity of the soul in accordance with virtuous reason.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The virtues are *hexeis* — stable dispositions formed by habituation — that aim at the mean between excess and defect with respect to the relevant feelings and actions.","n":[]},{"t":"Courage stands between cowardice and rashness; temperance between insensibility and self-indulgence; generosity between meanness and prodigality.","n":[]},{"t":"The mean is not arithmetic but relative to the agent and the circumstances, and finding it requires *phronesis* — practical wisdom — which is itself a virtue, learned through experience and proper habituation.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The contemplative life (*theoria*) is the supreme activity, since it is the activity of the highest faculty (*nous*) directed at the highest objects, but the practical life of moral virtue is also genuinely good and is the form of flourishing available to most people most of the time.","n":[1,2]}]],"texts":"Nicomachean Ethics Books I (the function argument and the chief good), II (the doctrine of the mean), VI (the intellectual virtues including practical wisdom), and X (the contemplative life as supreme); Eudemian Ethics for the parallel treatment; Politics for the connection between the good life and the polis. Reception: G.E.M. Anscombe's 'Modern Moral Philosophy' (1958) which inaugurated the contemporary virtue-ethics revival; Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981); Philippa Foot's Natural Goodness (2001); Rosalind Hursthouse's On Virtue Ethics (1999); Martha Nussbaum's The Fragility of Goodness (1986); the contemporary debate against Kantian deontology (Korsgaard) and consequentialism (Singer).","works":["Nicomachean Ethics Books I (the function argument and the chief good), II (the doctrine of the mean), VI (the intellectual virtues including practical wisdom), and X (the contemplative life as supreme)","Eudemian Ethics for the parallel treatment","Politics for the connection between the good life and the polis"],"reception":"G.E.M. Anscombe's 'Modern Moral Philosophy' (1958) which inaugurated the contemporary virtue-ethics revival; Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981); Philippa Foot's Natural Goodness (2001); Rosalind Hursthouse's On Virtue Ethics (1999); Martha Nussbaum's The Fragility of Goodness (1986); the contemporary debate against Kantian deontology (Korsgaard) and consequentialism (Singer).","status":"The central ethical doctrine of Western philosophy in the premodern period and again in the contemporary virtue-ethics revival. Anscombe's \"Modern Moral Philosophy\" (1958) reinaugurated the tradition; MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981) gave it a polemical historical narrative; Foot, Hursthouse, and Nussbaum developed it systematically. The standard contemporary objections: Kantians (Korsgaard, O'Neill) argue virtue ethics cannot ground its claims about the human good in pure practical reason; consequentialists (Singer, the Hare-Smart tradition) argue it cannot give action-guidance in problem cases; postmodern critics argue the appeal to a determinate human nature is question-begging.","era":"384-322 BCE","discipline":"Philosophy, Rhetoric","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Eudemian Ethics","page":"p. 48","canonical":"1219b","quote":"For example, the function of the builder's art is not building but a house, and the function of the art 1 By 'exoteric' Aristotle may refer to more popular works, written for an external audience rather than for circulation in his own school. See also n. 21 to Book i above. of medicine is not healing or treating, but health. With other things, their use is their function.","label":"Eudemian Ethics, 1219b"},{"n":2,"work":"Nicomachean Ethics","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Happiness, then, is something final and self-sufficient, and is the end of action. Presumably, however, to say that happiness is the chief good seems a platitude, and a clearer account of what it is still desired. This might perhaps be given, if we could first ascertain the function of man.","label":"Nicomachean Ethics"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"teleology-and-final-causes","label":"Teleology and final causes: does nature do nothing in vain?"},{"slug":"the-contemplative-life-as-the-supreme-activity","label":"The contemplative life as the supreme activity: is theoria higher than practical virtue?"}]}