The Nicomachean Ethics

But to get a more informative answer, he invokes the idea that human beings have a function—rational activity—and concludes that happiness is excellent rational activity: in his words, rational activity in accordance with virtue

On the practical side (dealing with matters that can be otherwise, hence are suitable for deliberation) he draws an important distinction between ‘making’—the province of art (i.e. expertise in producing some outcome)—and ‘doing’, where no outcome beyond the doing itself is aimed at (VI.5). Practical wisdom (phronēsis) is the intellectual virtue co

One school of interpretation finds Aristotle firmly advocating an inclusive account of happiness in 1.7, such that the best life will include the best combination of those goods we desire for themselves. Only thus can it ‘not be made more desirable by the addition’ of other goods. But, if Aristotle favoured such an inclusive account in Book I, this

Aretē, usually translated virtue, means excellence of any kind, and can be applied to pruning-hooks as well as to persons.

it is happiness, eudaimonia (1.4). And they all equate this with doing well or faring well. But what happiness is is a matter of long-standing dispute, we learn, with three ‘lives’ in contention: those of sensual enjoyment, of political achievement, and of intellectual contemplation (1.5).

Aristotle insists that habituation, not teaching, is the route to moral virtue (II. 1). We must practise doing good actions, not just read about virtue. Though

There is a way human beings ought to be and ought to live. This is not because god created them for a purpose—something Aristotle did not hold—but simply because they are a certain kind of living being, and every living species has its own work or function. Human beings have many capacities—Aristotle calls them capacities of soul, but by soul he ju

Since scientific knowledge requires proof, and any proof has to start from unproven assumptions, intuitive reason (nous) is needed as the grasp of these starting points for the deductive reasoning he takes scientific knowledge to require.

what makes them virtues is simply that, by having and exercising them, one is living a life that is the best life for a human being. They contribute intrinsically to a person’s eudaimonia. (He allows that certain external goods are necessary conditions for eudaimonia also, attacking a view—perhaps he took it to be Plato’s—that virtue is sufficient.