On Happiness

This week’s reading was fascinating. One thing that really caught my attention is the contemporary relevance of these classical writings. With a good translation it is easy to stop picturing Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in togas and start imagining them in business suits. For the sake of time and space, I will limit my response to the selections from Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” presented by authors Oliver Johnson and Andrews Reath in Ethics; Selections from Classical and Contemporary Writers (2007).

Happiness seems to be an ever more elusive ideal in our society of empty materialism, violence and spiritual crisis. Yet, the United States Constitution is dedicated to the pursuit of it. Happiness is supposed to be what we are all here to achieve. Aristotle wrote on happiness, and I will summarize his main points briefly:

· The purpose of all activity is to try and do good, to obtain happiness, or “human flourishing” (p.61).
· Nobody agrees what happiness actually is (and therefore what good actions are), but for the sake of argument, Aristotle uses “what is obvious or moral” as a measuring stick. He considers three sources of happiness, including pleasurable, contemplative or political actions (p.63).
· Aristotle deals with the tricky matter of whether happiness is an end in itself or a means to good. He asserts that“we must always choose happiness as an end in itself and never for the sake of something else” (p.66) An hour spent with a lover undoubtedly is a happy hour, but if that love is immoral or ill-fated, unhappiness of matched or greater intensity will follow. Happiness must be the end point we aim for.
· The good can only be obtained by actions. Virtues mean nothing in a non-active vegetative state (p.68-69). Simply being good is not enough; one must act out that goodness to flourish.
· Moral virtue is a result of habit (p.72) and we must be taught to feel pleasure and pain at appropriate circumstances (p. 74).
· Aristotle says, “the nature of moral qualities is such that they are destroyed by defect and excess,” and he introduces the idea of the mean, the perfect balance between extremes in emotion or action (p. 73). He claims that being average is virtuous and being extreme is a vice (p. 78-80), although he does admit one has to lean a bit to find the average (p. 82).
· From page 82-83, he reiterates that happiness is not passive, but intrinsically linked to action and engagement, and, assuming that it is a well-trained morally good person, that action would be virtuous.
· Finally, our reading concludes that the contemplative life is the ultimate happiness (p.86).

Aristotle’s argument is so beautifully written and so logically laid out, that it is possible to get swept away in its conclusions without questioning some of his basic assumptions. I will choose to respond to five of these assumptions: 1) goodness is nurture, not nature; 2) it is better to be virtuous by society’s standards; 3) there is a hierarchy of happiness; 4) extremes are vices and the mean is virtue and 5) happiness should be our ultimate goal.

The essence of human nature has been studied by scientists for centuries, and still there is no agreement about the nature of human goodness. Are we born good, or do we become good (or bad), as Aristotle says, through training and habit (p. 72)? Unlike one who sees our natural state as neutral, I sense that the natural state of human beings lies in mixed extremes of feeling and action, good and bad, and that our training counters or reinforces our leanings.

I am uncomfortable with Aristotle’s assumption that it is better to be virtuous when his definition is what society praises or blames (p. 63). In this society, I object to what many would consider virtuous, and my personal value system would not be considered virtuous by some. I don’t use societal norms to define virtue, because as a Christian, my allegiance is not to this society, but to a vision of the Kingdom of God through Christ. In the same vein, I do not believe that virtue always brings happiness and vise versa. Would not our happiness seem sugary sweet without the natural bitterness and sorrow involved in being human? If suffering is necessary (such as Christ’s atonement) for happiness to shine, then according to Aristotle, suffering could also been understood as good.

Aristotle has an unhealthy notion of the hierarchy of happiness when he writes on page 64, “the common run of people and the most vulgar identify [happiness] with pleasure,” while the noble class identify happiness with contemplation and political action. I disagree with making this divide. I think pleasure, including bodily pleasure (associated with women as well as lower classes), should be considered part of the whole of happiness and not a lower subset. We need to learn to overcome the divide that has kept us from a holistic understanding of happiness based on centuries of sexist and classist assumptions.

Finally, I would like to say a word for ecstasy and extremes. What is a life, if it knows nothing but average, nothing but the mean? Are we not created to experience the full range of human emotions and to explore the full range of human experiences? When Aristotle labels the extremes a vice and the average a virtue, he limits human potential (p. 80). Adventures on the edge of the spectrum cause personal growth and can bring a state of ecstasy. In fact, those experiences on the extremes of emotional life are similar to Plato’s description of the Sun outside the cave (p.57).

I don’t know of a case of edge dancing bringing happiness. But here I ask: is happiness indeed the ultimate goal? What about spiritual enlightenment, wisdom, karmic reckoning, or compassionate or heroic actions? Jesus Christ’s suffering on the cross (and that of the Green Man before him) changes the paradigm of happiness as goodness forever. Happiness, apparently, was not a high priority for Jesus, yet he is considered the example of ultimate good by hundreds of millions of people. He could have been in a state of spiritual ecstasy that sustained him through his passion and death, and the reunification with God in the afterlife may be the ultimate experience of human bliss. But the experience of Jesus’s crucifixion can not be considered a “mean” or average of anything!

Examining each of these assumptions helps me question Aristotle’s outlook. Yet, his writing is persuasive. In conclusion, I look forward to a further examination of ethics from different paradigms, and I appreciate a deeper understanding of how the classic Greek and Roman thinkers, especially Aristotle, have formed Western society.


References

Johnson, Oliver, and Reath, Andrews (2007), Ethics; Selections from Classical and Contemporary Writers, Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth