Aristotle and Hellenistic Paths to the Good Life
Aristotle on Virtue and Excellence
Human beings perform numerous actions, and each can become a virtue or excellence. For Aristotle, human life itself can be driven toward excellence. He considered only the virtuous and good life to be truly happy. To understand this good life, Aristotle delved into human nature, distinguishing two parts:
- Volitional Part: Where desires and acts of will emerge.
- Rational Part: Where deliberations occur.
Desires shape one’s character, which may be motivated by impulsive urges. Thoughts and discussion, however, are activities of the rational part; rationality is the hallmark of being human. Goals set solely by the volitional part can be destructive and may not lead to happiness. For Aristotle, the essential guides are experience and wisdom.
The Mean and Prudence
According to Aristotle, decision guides behavior. A good decision is characterized by finding the middle ground (the mean) between two extremes (excess and deficiency). The habit of consistently deciding well, choosing this mean, constitutes a virtuous life.
The term “mean” refers to the optimal midpoint in our conduct relative to us. This middle term is always relative because it depends on the individual and the specific circumstances. Only experience teaches us where our particular mean lies in any situation. The faculty of reason that helps us find this is known as prudence (phronesis). Prudence is not innate but learned; it is the practical wisdom or habit of finding the right balance in each case.
Wisdom and Contemplative Happiness
For Aristotle, prudence and the search for the mean are essential for forming a virtuous character. However, the ultimate happy life involves the performance of humanity’s highest activity: contemplation. This intellectual virtue is theoretical wisdom (sophia).
Man’s highest happiness, therefore, is found in the contemplative life. Because this requires developed rational faculties, Aristotle concluded that neither children nor animals could achieve this highest form of happiness.
Hellenistic Schools of Thought
Cynicism: Life According to Nature
Cynics rejected many social conventions and forms of social life. Their ideal was a life where the human being is fully integrated with nature, living simply and virtuously. They criticized societal norms they saw as artificial or corrupt. A key representative of the Cynic school was Diogenes of Sinope.
Stoicism: Harmony with Nature and Reason
For the Stoic school, the purpose of life is the good life, achieved only through genuine harmony with nature and living according to reason. The sage attains happiness through this alignment. Faced with natural events or fate, the Stoics believed there is no alternative but acceptance; it is vain to rebel against what cannot be changed.
One cannot go against the course of nature. Therefore, through reason, we must accept what happens to us without being overwhelmed by passions (like fear, grief, or excessive joy). In this way, the mind achieves tranquility (apatheia). Main representatives included Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The Stoics also defended a cosmopolitan worldview, viewing all human beings as citizens of a single world-community governed by reason.
Epicureanism: Happiness as Absence of Pain
This school, named after its founder Epicurus, sought happiness, which they identified with pleasure. However, for Epicurus, the highest pleasure was not fleeting indulgence but a stable state of tranquility (ataraxia) – the absence of mental distress – and freedom from bodily pain (aponia).
Epicurus believed humans must overcome the main causes of distress and unease to achieve happiness. These include:
- Fear of the gods: Epicurus taught that the gods exist but are perfect and blissful beings who do not concern themselves with human affairs, neither rewarding nor punishing. Thus, they should not be feared.
- Fear of death: Death, Epicurus argued, is the cessation of sensation and consciousness; it is nothing to us and should not be a source of worry.
- Fear of pain and failure: The wise person achieves autonomy and understands that true happiness depends not on external factors or the opinions of others, but on internal factors under one’s own control, primarily a simple life and a tranquil mind.