ARISTOTLE’S FLOURISHING
The idea that there is a goal of life and that a human being can have a function is at the heart of most ancient ethical theories. The idea is that the best kind of life for human beings involves functioning properly. The task is to identify what that function was in the sense of the activity that people are suited to.
The most famous exponent of this theory is Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics.
Aristotle's ethical philosophy is called 'eudaimonistic', from the Greek word for 'happiness' - eudaimonia ‘good’ (eu) and god or spirit or demon (daimon).
The term is broader and more dynamic than this, however, and is best captured by the idea of 'flourishing' or 'enjoying a good (successful, fortunate) life'.
Aristotle argues that happiness is like health in that it is a matter of correct functioning. The person who lives the kind of life for which human beings are most suited will be the happiest in fully realizing his or her potential.
Since the ability to reason is the distinguishing feature of human beings, Aristotle argues that a life devoted to reason therefore represents the pinnacle of human flourishing, and would therefore be the happiest life.
Since man is a ‘zoon politikon’, a social animal, human beings can also find happiness through a practical life, lived out in society, in politikos bios or public life.
There are thus two kinds of happiness: a social everyday one, for most people, and a better one, the contemplative life, for a select few.
Aristotle’s philosophy is also a 'virtue ethics', since it is concerned with cultivating a certain kind of character.
According to Aristotle, in line with other Greek thinkers, being a good person and knowing right from wrong is not primarily a matter of understanding and applying certain moral rules and principles. Rather, it is a question of being or becoming the kind of person who, by acquiring wisdom through proper practice and training, will habitually behave in appropriate ways in the appropriate circumstances. The virtues are expressions or manifestations of eudaimonia, the highest good for human beings and the ultimate purpose of human activity.
For Aristotle and the Greeks, there are four cardinal virtues - courage, justice, temperance (self-mastery) and intelligence (practical wisdom). A pivotal doctrine for both Plato and Aristotle is the so-called 'unity of the virtues'. Observing that a good person must recognize how to respond sensitively to the sometimes conflicting demands of different virtues, Plato and Aristotle argue that the virtues are like different facets of a single jewel, so that it is not in fact possible to possess one virtue.