#nichomachean

[jamabushi]

Therefore, virtue...is a mean condition between two vices, one resulting from excess and the other from deficiency...

[jamabushi]

https://cyberianpunks.threadless.com/designs/happy-cattle

[rachelshaynwine-blog]

Because I’m Happyyyyy

Is happiness cumulative, a fleeting moment, or a reflection only after death? Aristotle doesn’t seem capable of deciding. While my classmate Jacobbroussard’s claims that “happiness is not transient, it takes a lifetime of work”, and mcstovall believes “Happiness is the end-goal… and that cannot be achieved until death”, I firmly believe that happiness is more regualarly present than my classmates think.

As Aristotle reflects: actions that contribute solely to one end goal and nothing else “clearly…will be the good, indeed the chief good” (1094a 1, 23).” This seems to support that the chief good, or the highest good of all, is only attained when everything you do is to work for this good. “Again, [the human good] must be over a complete life…Neither does one day or a short time make someone blessed and happy” (12). I can’t agree with this, because on a daily basis I do feel a sense of happiness. This is why I also can’t agree with Aristotle’s questioning of whether one should “wait to see the end” before determining if one is truly happy (16). Perhaps what Aristotle is trying to say is that to say one is happy as a generalization, it has to be cumulative across a lifetime. But I do think it is important to note that happiness is a much more frequent presence.

Yet, Aristotle’s continuation of describing the chief good “as consisting in possession or in use” implies that one seeks happiness in daily actions, or is in a state of being happy, which also implies that happiness works more common than once in summation of a lifetime (13). Would someone really work for something every day if they only believed it was for them to be happy the day they died? I don’t think so; I think the reaffirmation of happiness through their actions in regular intervals keeps man motivated to continue working for their happiness.

And then Aristotle brings death into the equation of happiness. In my opinion, this is the most misleading part of his whole argument. Aristotle questions whether or not one “is happy when he is dead” and if “he is now beyond the reach of evils and misfortunes” (16). While my personal beliefs don’t recognize an afterlife, I do think that the dead interact with the living in a detached way. Yet, Aristotle seems to believe that the actions of a happy dead man’s descendants can affect him to a certain degree. Aristotle claims: “[effect on the dead] is of such a nature and degree as neither to make not happy those who are happy, nor anything like that”, but does this mean that the happiness of the dead remains consistent after their death (19)? If happiness is an end goal, as Aristotle supports, then I question how it would be possible for happiness to change after the end.

Aristotle makes many strong arguments that bring to light the complexities of happiness and its relation to mankind. However, I do think that even Aristotle himself is confused as to the presence of happiness in someone’s life, the duration of this happiness, and the consistency of the happiness. In my opinion, how happiness fits into someone’s lifetime is one of the most significant aspects of it, and I would’ve liked this subject to be explored more coherently.

[upennmanuscripts]

Ms. Codex 243 is rife with decorated initials, each one overgrown with vine and foliate motifs. The initial “o” on folio 1r, pictured here, even has a small coat of arms at the center of the motif. Folios 1v and 2r are additionally pictured.

The manuscript is a Italian compendium of Aristotle's Nichomachean ethics, written in ca. 1500. For more information on the manuscript, or to take a look at the other decorated initials please see Penn in Hand; http://hdl.library.upenn.edu/1017/d/medren/1580850

[xo-caroline-blog-blog-blog-blog]

Nichomachean Ethics

"Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is."

Aristotle 350BCE

[philosophiae-moralis-blog-blog]

"[To] do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for every one nor is it easy; wherefore goodness is both rare and laudable and noble."

Aristotle, Ethics II.9

[attackthecat-blog]

Aristotle

What I have been learning from reading Aristotle so far can be summed up in a few lines of Kid Cudi lyrics.

"I'm on the pursuit of happiness, and I know everything that shines ain't always going to be golden. And I'll be good once I get it, I'll be good."