pg 3BOOK I · HAPPINESS THE CHIEF GOOD

Happiness is the noblest, the best, and the most pleasant of human goods*

• 1214a Link 1. There is an inscription on the porch of the temple of Leto in
• the shrine at Delos* that runs as follows:

• 5      Noblest of all* is perfect justice, best of all is a life of health;
•       Most pleasant of all is to win one's heart's desire.

• Link The man who composed those verses was expressing his view that
• Link goodness, nobility, and pleasure belong to different things. But we
• Link cannot agree with him. For happiness, being the noblest and best of
• things, is the most pleasant of all as well.
• There are many matters and features of nature that present problems
• 10and need to be investigated. Some of the disciplines that treat of these
• contribute simply to the acquisition of knowledge; others are concerned
• also with getting things and doing things. From time to time we shall
• have occasion to treat of matters of purely theoretical philosophy, in so
• Link far as they are relevant to our inquiry; but our first concern is to inves-
• tigate what constitutes a good life, and how it is to be attained.*
• When people chance to be called 'happy', is this something they
• 15owe to nature, like tall people, or short people, or people of colour? Or
• has it been acquired by learning, so that happiness is a form of knowl-
• edge? Or by a kind of training? After all, human beings acquire many
• characteristics neither from nature nor by learning, but by habitu-
• Link 20ation—bad characteristics by bad habituation, and good characteris-
• Link tics by good habituation. Perhaps people are made happy in none of
• the above ways, but in one or other different manner. Are they like
• Link people possessed by a nymph or a divinity, getting carried away by the
• 25inspiration of some kind of spirit?* Or is happiness a matter of for-
• tune? After all, many people are willing to identify happiness with
• good luck. What is clear is that it is in all or some or one of these ways
• that happiness comes to people. For almost every change originates
• from one or other of these sources (provided we use 'knowledge' in a
• Link 30broad sense * to include all activity arising from thinking).
• pg 4 Link Happiness, and a blissful and noble life, would seem to consist
• above all in three things that appear to be of all things the most
• worth choosing. Some say that the greatest good is wisdom;* others
• 1214bsay it is virtue,* and others again say pleasure. People disagree about
• the size of the contribution that each of these makes to happiness,
• Link and claim that one element offers more than another. Some rate
• Link wisdom as a greater good than virtue, while others rate virtue above
• wisdom, and others again rate pleasure above the other two. Some
• 5say that a happy life is an amalgam of all three elements, or of some
• Link pair of them, while others think it consists in just one of them.

The nature of happiness and its preconditions

• 2. All this considered, everyone who has the power to live according
• Link to his own choice should set up for himself* some object for a noble
• life—whether honour, or reputation, or wealth, or culture—with a
• Link 10view to which he will govern all his conduct, since not to have one's
• Link life organized with reference to some end is a mark of great folly.
• Above all, he must first determine in his own mind, with care and
• without haste, where in our human condition the good life resides,
• Link and what are the necessary conditions for people to possess it. For a
• healthy life is not the same thing as the necessary conditions for
• 15healthy living, and there are many other cases where a like distinc-
• tion holds. So a noble life is not the same as those things whose lack
• would make nobility of life impossible. (Some of these necessary
• conditions are not specific to health or to life, but are more or less
• common to any and every state or activity; for instance, unless we
• 20are breathing and awake and capable of moving there is hardly
• anything, whether good or bad, that we can take any part in. Other
• conditions—and they are important to notice—are specific to indi-
• vidual natures. In the case of physical well-being, eating meat and
• Link taking exercise after meals are conditions of a kind quite different
• from the above.) Here is the root of the controversies about the
• 25nature and causes of happiness: some people treat as parts of happi-
• Link ness items that are no more than its necessary conditions.*

Opinions about happiness

• 3. It would be a waste of time to examine all the opinions about hap-
• Link piness held by different people. Children, invalids, and lunatics have
• 30many views, but no sane person would trouble himself about them.
• pg 5What such people need is not argument but something else: either
• time for their opinions to mature, or else medical or penal correction—
• for medical treatment is no less correctional than flogging. Likewise,
• Link we do not need to consider the opinions of the multitude, who speak
• 1215aat a venture on almost every topic and especially on this one. On this
• topic, at least, only the opinions of philosophers need to be taken
• Link into account, for it is absurd to offer reasoning to those who need
• not reasoning but chastisement. Every inquiry, however, and not
• least the quest for the highest and best life, throws up its own prob-
• Link 5lems, and so it is well to place these latter opinions under scrutiny.
• Link For one way of proving a thesis that is contested is to refute the
• Link arguments of its opponents.
• Moreover, such considerations should especially be borne in
• Link mind with respect to the matters to which our entire investigation
• must be directed. We are looking for the things that enable us to live
• 10a noble and happy life ('blissful life' is perhaps presumptuous*) and
• what prospects decent people will have of acquiring any of them.
• For if a noble life is something that results from chance or the course
• of nature, it would be a hopeless dream for many people; its acquisi-
• tion would be beyond their powers no matter how strenuous their
• 15endeavours. But if it is something that depends on a person's char-
• acter and conduct, then it will be a good both more widespread and
• more divine: more widespread because it will be accessible to more
• people, and more divine because happiness will reside in the per-
• sonal development of character and conduct.

The three lives of philosophy, virtue, and pleasure

• Link 204. Most of the controversies and difficulties will become clear if we
• offer an appropriate definition of how to think of happiness. Does it
• consist only in a particular character of one's soul, as some senior
• philosophers have thought?* Or is it necessary for one not only to
• have a particular character, but more importantly to exhibit that
• character in one's actions?
• 25We can distinguish different kinds of life. Some of them, such as
• lives spent in the vulgar arts, or commerce, or in servile occupations,
• make no claim to be a flourishing existence, but are pursued only out
• of need.* (By vulgar arts I mean arts pursued only for the sake
• Link 30of celebrity, by servile occupations I mean the work of sedentary
• wage-earners, and by commerce I mean buying and selling by retail.)
• pg 6 Link But just as there are three items reckoned as elements of a happy
• life—the three mentioned earlier as the greatest of human goods,
• Link 35namely, virtue and wisdom and pleasure—so too we see three lives
• that all who have the opportunity for choice choose to live, namely,
• the political life, the philosophical life, and the hedonistic life.*
• 1215bThe philosopher aims to devote his life to wisdom and the con-
• templation of truth, the politician to noble deeds (conduct that
• manifests virtue), and the hedonist to the pleasures of the body. And
• 5so, as we have said before, different people call different people
• happy. Anaxagoras of Clazomenae* was once asked who was the
• happiest person. 'Not anyone that you would think,' he replied, 'but
• someone who would seem very odd to you.' He gave this answer
• because he could tell that the man who asked the question thought
• 10it was impossible for anyone to be called happy unless he was great
• Link and beautiful or rich. But he himself, no doubt, believed that any
• man who leads a painless, blameless, and upright life, or is engaged
• in some divine contemplation, is as blissful as the human condition
• allows.

Opinions about what is worthwhile in life

• Link 155. There are many problems on which it is difficult to make a sound
• judgement, and none more so than one that everyone thinks is so
• Link easy that they need no special qualification to solve it: namely, what
• in life is worth choosing, and what is there whose attainment would
• totally satisfy one's desire.* There are many contingencies of life
• 20that make people want to throw it away: diseases, torments, tem-
• pests, and so on. Clearly, right from the start, if given the choice,
• Link people in such straits would have preferred not to be born at all.
• Then there is the kind of life that people lead as children; no one in
• his right mind could tolerate returning to such a state. Moreover,
• there are many events that involve neither pleasure nor pain, or in-
• 25volve pleasure only of an ignoble kind; episodes of such a kind make
• non-existence preferable to life. Altogether, if we were to heap up all
• the things that people do and undergo involuntarily (in the sense
• that nothing of them is wanted for its own sake), we would be offer-
• Link ing no reason for choosing to be alive rather than not, even if we
• were to throw in an infinite stretch of time.
• 30Further, no one who was not an utter slave would put any value
• on existence solely for the pleasures of food and sex, in the absence
• pg 7of all the other pleasures that are provided to humans by knowing
• and seeing and using any of their other senses. It is clear that for
• 35a person making such a choice there would be no difference
• between being born a beast or a human. Certainly the ox in Egypt,
• 1216awhom they venerate under the name of Apis,* has access to more of
• these pleasures than many a monarch. The same goes for the pleas-
• ures of sleep: what difference is there between sleeping an uninter-
• rupted sleep from one's first day to one's last, for a thousand years
• 5or more, and living the life of a plant? Certainly plants do seem to
• share some such kind of life, and so do babies, for babies when they
• first come into existence within their mothers have a continuous life
• but sleep all the time. From all this it is obvious that inquirers have
• little success in finding out what is well-being and what is the good
• in life.
• Link 10Someone who was puzzled about these matters once asked
• Link Anaxagoras, was there any reason why one should choose to be born
• Link rather than not? He is said to have replied, 'To survey the heavens
• and the order of the whole cosmos.' So for him it was knowledge or
• 15science that made the choice of life worthwhile. On the other hand,
• people who celebrate Sardanapallus or Smindyrides of Sybara,* or
• some other dedicated hedonist, appear to equate happiness with
• enjoyment. There are others again who would choose no kind of
• 20wisdom nor any bodily pleasures in preference to deeds of virtue.
• Not everyone makes this choice for the sake of reputation; some act
• well even when they are not going to get any credit. However, most
• Link statesmen do not deserve the name, for they are not truly statesmen.
• Link 25A statesman is someone who chooses noble deeds for their own sake,
• whereas most politicians take up their career for personal gain and
• Link advancement.
• From what has been said it is clear that everyone relates happi-
• ness to one or other of three lives: the political life, the philosophical
• 30life, and the hedonistic life. If we take the last first, there is no prob-
• lem in identifying the nature and quality and sources of the pleas-
• ures associated with the body. The question is not what such
• pleasures are, but whether and how far they contribute to happiness.
• Suppose that a noble life should indeed have certain pleasures asso-
• ciated with it: what we have to ask is whether it is these bodily pleas-
• ures that we should associate with it. No doubt the happy person
• 35must share them in some way or other, but perhaps it is on account
• pg 8of quite different pleasures that he is rightly thought to live a life
• Link that is pleasant and not merely painless. But these matters must be
• investigated further later on.*
• Link First, we must consider virtue and wisdom, and discover the
• nature of each of them.* Are they parts of the good life, either in
• 1216bthemselves or through the conduct to which they give rise? After all,
• Link even if not everyone links them to happiness, they are so linked by
• Link all people who are worth taking into account.
• The elder Socrates* believed that the goal of life was to know
• virtue, and he used to ask what justice is, what courage is, and so
• 5with every part of virtue. This was an intelligible way to proceed,
• since he thought that the virtues themselves were pieces of
• knowledge, so that once you know what justice is, you are a just
• person.* After all, as soon as we have learnt geometry and architec-
• ture, we become geometers and architects. And so he used to
• 10ask what virtue is, rather than how or whence it comes into being.
• This is appropriate in the case of the theoretical sciences, because
• there is nothing else to astronomy or physics or geometry over and
• above the knowledge and understanding of the subject matter of
• these disciplines. Nothing indeed prevents them being useful to us
• 15for many of our needs; but that is something coincidental. In the
• Link case of productive sciences, however, the aim of the science is differ-
• ent from the science itself and not a mere matter of knowledge:
• health is different from medicine, and law and order (or the like) is
• not the same as political science. The knowledge of what is noble is
• Link 20indeed a noble thing; but in the case of virtue the most valuable
• thing is to know whence it arises rather than to know its nature. For
• what we want is not simply to know what courage is, but actually to
• be courageous; and we do not want simply to know what justice is,
• but rather to be just ourselves. It is parallel to the way in which we
• want to be healthy rather than simply to know what health is, and to
• 25the way we aim at physical well-being rather than at mere knowledge
• Link of its nature.

The method of inquiry

• Link 6. About all these matters we must seek conviction through argu-
• Link ment, using people's perceptions* as evidence and example. The
• Link best thing would be if everyone turned out to be in agreement with
• Link 30what we are going to say; if not so, that all should, on reflection,
• pg 9 Link reach at least partial agreement. After all, everyone has something
• Link of their own to contribute to the truth, and we must start our proof
• Link from such points. If we begin with things that are said in a manner
• Link that is true but unenlightening, we shall make progress towards en-
• lightenment, constantly substituting more perspicuous expressions
• for ones that are more familiar but confused.
• Link 35In every discipline there is a difference between philosophical
• Link and unphilosophical manners of expression. Even in political think-
• Link ing it is misguided to treat as irrelevant an inquiry into not only
• what is the case, but why it is the case.* In every discipline that is the
• Link way a philosopher proceeds: but great caution is needed here. Since
• it seems that a philosopher should never speak at a venture, but
• 1217a Link always with reason, some people offer reasons that are irrelevant or
• unsound, and often get away with it. (Some people do this in error;
• others are sheer charlatans.) By such arguments even people of
• experience and practical ability can be caught out by people who
• 5lack even the capability for practical or strategic thinking. This
• comes about through want of culture: for want of culture is pre-
• Link cisely the inability to distinguish between arguments that are appro-
• priate, and those that are inappropriate, to a given subject matter.
• Link 10It is well to make a separate judgement about a conclusion and
• Link the explanations on which it is based, because, as we have just said,
• Link there are often cases where one should attend not just to the results
• Link of arguments, but rather to people's perceptions. (As things are, if
• Link people cannot see a flaw in the argument, they cannot help believing
• 15what has been said.) Moreover, it often happens that what appears
• to have been shown by argument is in fact true, but not for the
• reason offered by the argument. (There can be a proof of a truth
• Link from a falsehood, as is clear from the Analytics.)

The greatest of human goods

• 7. So much by way of prologue. Let us begin our discussion by
• 20starting, as was said, from the first, unclarified, opinions, and seek
• Link then to gain* a clear view of what happiness is. It is generally agreed
• Link that it is the greatest and best of all human goods. We say 'human',
• because there may well be happiness for some higher form of being,
• say for a god. None of the other animals that are by nature inferior
• 25to human beings have any claim to this title: no horse or bird or fish
• is happy. Nor are any other beings, unless they have by definition
• pg 10some share of the divine in their nature.* To be sure, they can have
• a better or worse life, but it is by sharing in good things in some
• Link 30manner that is different from happiness.*
• That this is the case is something to be examined later. For the
• present let us say that among good things there are some that fall
• within the scope of human action and some that do not. Why do we
• make this point? Well, there are some things, including some good
• things,* that are not susceptible to change at all, and these things
• may well by nature be the best things of all. Then again, there are
• Link 35some things that fall within the scope of action, but only for agents
• Link more powerful than us.
• Link There are two ways in which things fall within the scope of action.
• There are the things that are the purposes of our action, and the
• Link things that we do in order to bring them about: thus, we count health
• and wealth as being within the scope of action, and also the things
• we undertake in order to produce them, such as a healthy lifestyle or
• a commercial venture.
• Link 40It is evident that we must lay it down that happiness is the chief
• good among the things that fall within the scope of human action.

What is the chief good?

• 1217b Link 8. So we must inquire what this chief good is,* and in how many
• Link senses the expression is used. People's perceptions about this can be
• summed up in three opinions.
• Link Some say that the chief good is Goodness itself,* and Goodness
• Itself has the properties of being the first of goods and of causing by
• 5its presence the goodness of all other good things. Both these prop-
• Link erties—I mean, being the first of goods, and causing by its presence
• the goodness of all other goods—belong, it is claimed, to the Idea of
• Good.* For, they say, it is of this Idea that good is most truly predi-
• cated, while other things are called good because they participate in
• Link 10it or resemble it. If this shared Idea were eliminated, so too would be
• all the things that participate in it and thus share its name. That is
• the way in which what comes first is related to what comes after. So
• Goodness Itself is the Idea of Good; and, moreover, it, like any other
• 15Idea, is separable from what participates in it.
• Link A thorough investigation of this belief belongs to a different dis-
• cussion, which would inevitably bear a closer resemblance to
• logic*—for that is the only discipline that deals with destructive
• pg 1120arguments of general application. But if we must make a summary
• Link judgement, let us make two remarks. First, the claim that there is
• Link an Idea of Good, or for that matter an Idea of anything else, is too
• Link abstract and vacuous; the thesis has been examined in many
• ways, both in our popular and in our philosophical works.* Secondly,
• even if there really are such things as Ideas, including the Idea of
• Good, they are altogether useless either for a good life or for
• actions.
• Link 25For good is predicated in many ways—in as many ways, indeed,
• Link as being.* Being, as has been explained elsewhere, signifies essence,
• or quality, or quantity, or time, and in addition active or passive
• change. Good occurs in each of these categories. In the category of
• 30substance there is mind and God, in the category of quality there is
• justice, in the category of quantity there is proportion, in the cat-
• egory of time there is opportunity, and in the matter of change there
• is teaching and being taught. Just as being is not a single thing
• Link including all the things mentioned, neither is goodness.
• Nor is there a single science* of being or goodness. Even goods
• 35classified in parallel categories (e.g. opportunity and proportion) are
• Link not subjects of the same science: different sciences investigate
• opportunity and proportion in different cases. Thus, in nutrition it
• Link is medicine and gymnastics that determine opportunity and pro-
• portion, but in the conduct of warfare it is strategy. Thus, for each
• 1218a Link different kind of activity there is a different science. So there could
• hardly be a single science whose province was Goodness itself.
• Again, where things can be ranked as prior and posterior,* there
• is not in addition some common thing that is separate from them all.
• That would mean that there was something prior to the first of the
• series: the common separate thing would have priority since if that
• 5common element were eliminated, the first item would be elimin-
• ated also. Take the case of multiplication, and let us suppose that the
• first case of multiplication is multiplication by two. Then there
• Link cannot be some separate element, multiplication tout court, that is
• common to all cases of multiplication. For that would then be prior
• to multiplication by two.
• Alternatively, even if one were to say that the common element is
• Link 10separable, does it turn out to be the Idea? They say that if justice is
• a good, and courage too, there is also Goodness itself.* 'Itself' thus
• gets added to the definition of what is common. What would that
• pg 12mean except that it is eternal and separate? But a thing that is white
• for many days is no whiter than something that is white for only one,
• so that what is good would not become more good by being eternal.
• Nor is the common good identical with the Idea because the common
• good belongs to all goods.
• Link 15Goodness itself should be demonstrated in a manner quite oppo-
• site to the way in which they do it nowadays. Nowadays they start
• from objects whose goodness is a matter of controversy, and go on to
• demonstrate goods whose goodness is uncontroversial. Thus, they
• start with numbers,* and go on to demonstrate that justice and
• health are goods, on the grounds that these latter are orders and
• Link 20numbers, and goodness belongs to numbers and units, because the
• One is Goodness itself. But they should start with the uncontrover-
• sial goods like health and strength and temperance, and go on to
• show the greater nobility of what is unchanging. For all these things
• exemplify order and repose; so if they are good, the latter things are
• even more good, since they exemplify them to a greater degree.
• Link 25There is also something wrong with the proof that the One is
• Goodness itself, on the grounds that it is something that the num-
• bers tend towards. This is far too bald an assertion without any clear
• statement of what this tending consists in. How can there be any
• desire in things that lack life? People should take more trouble, and
• not maintain without argument things that even if argued for are
• 30not easy to believe. And to say that all things tend towards some one
• good is not true: for each thing has a desire for its own special good,
• the eye for sight, the body for health, and so on.
• The problems just listed urge us to deny that there is any such
• Link thing as Goodness itself, and to say that if there were, it would be no
• use to political science. That, like other disciplines, has its own par-
• Link 35ticular good, in the way that physical well-being is the particular
• good of gymnastics. Further, there is what is written in the text:* the
• Link Form of Good is either useful to no discipline or useful to all in the
• Link same way. Further, it is not within the scope of action.
• 1218b Link Likewise, the common good is not identical with Goodness itself
• (for this common element would be present even in a tiny good), nor
• is it within the scope of action. For the task of medicine is not to
• Link ensure that any old good should be where it belongs, but that health
• should be. So too with all the other arts. Goodness is manifold, and
• 5one part of it is nobility. Some parts of goodness are within the scope
• pg 13of action and others are not. What is within the scope of action is the
• Link kind of good that provides a purpose, and nothing of the kind is to
• Link be found in things that are unchanging.
• Link It is obvious, then, that neither the Idea of Good, nor the good
• that is common, is the chief good that we are looking for: for the one
• is unchangeable and unattainable by action; the other, while it is
• changeable, is not attainable by action. What really is the chief good
• Link 10is the purpose or end that is the cause of what leads to it and is
• the first of all goods. It is this, then, that goodness itself must be: the
• Link end of everything attainable by human action. It is that which is the
• Link object of the science which is supreme over all others, namely polit-
• ical and economic science and wisdom. This supremacy marks off
• these disciplines from others: whether they differ from each other is
• 15something that will have to be explained later.*
• Link An end stands in a causal relation to the means subordinate to it:
• Link that is shown by the method of teaching. Teachers prove that the
• means are severally good by giving a definition of the end, because
• Link the purpose is one form of cause. They say, for instance, that since
• to be healthy is such-and-such, necessarily what conduces to health
• Link 20must be so-and-so. Healthy items, for instance, are an efficient cause
• of health; but it is only the cause of health's coming into existence;
• Link it is not the cause of its being a good. No science proves its own first
• principles, and no one demonstrates that health is good, unless he is
• Link a sophist rather than a doctor—for sophists will prove anything by
• inappropriate arguments.
• Link 25The good as the end of man and the best of things attainable by
• Link action: that is the object of our study. We must now inquire in how
• many ways this chief good is realized; that is what is best.