The Virtuous Life

Aristotle argues that being happy is also being good. Once you have achieved happiness that is the end, and because it is something final it should be where all actions aim. Aristotle says that this is a truism, meaning that of course we should always aim to be happy because it is supreme good. The idea behind this links back to virtue and why being virtuous leads to happiness. Each individual has different abilities and skills which will lead to their own specific type of happiness. Happiness does not come in the same form for everybody, but ultimately when one is excellent at what they do, they will achieve happiness. In this paper, I will explain why the virtuous life is the equivalent of the happy life. In order to get a deeper understanding

Aristotle says, “Moreover this activity must occupy a complete lifetime; for one swallow does not make spring, nor does one fine day; and similarly one day or brief period of happiness does not make a man supremely blessed and happy.”. When he says this he is claiming that in order to be virtuous you must practice it and perfect it daily in order to be excellent, thus leading to happiness. Aristotle then begins to talks about how different professions view perfection. He talks about a carpenter and a geometrician and how they view the right angle. He says, “…the former is content with that approximation to it which satisfies the purpose of his work; the latter being a student of truth, looks for its essence or essential attributes.”. What Aristotle is saying is, the carpenter will never get a perfect right angle when constructing anything he is building, but he will get very close to a right angle and it will be sufficient enough to get the task he needs done completed correctly. A carpenter knows this though, but if he can get as close to a perfect right angle as possible he will complete his project excellently making him ultimately happy and virtuous. A geometrician on the other hand looks for perfection of the right angle. A geometrician’s job is to find exactly 90 degrees when studying right triangles. Because his job is specifically finding the 90-degree angle, performing excellently and virtuously would be finding exactly 90 degrees making him happy. Both the virtuous carpenter and virtuous geometrician have their different versions of excellence, but that does not mean neither are excellent because the faculties they have are