Nicomachean Ethics Book 1

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics essentially describes what the “chief good” in life is supposed to be. According to Aristotle, everything in life has the main goal to be good. Every action we take is working towards an end result, also known as working towards the “chief good”. This “chief good” in life is said to be happiness and everything we pursue in life is meant to lead to this. But there was one thing about this pursuit of happiness that didn’t make much sense to me. The idea that Aristotle explained is that man cannot achieve happiness until life is complete, which would mean that you cannot be classified as living a full, and happy life, until you reach the end of it. I don’t believe that this is an accurate way to describe how happiness in life can be maintained and achieved.

In all honesty, it doesn’t make any sense at all to say that one can only achieve happiness once they have lived their full life. I believe this because in every person’s life there are going to be many ups and downs, it isn’t possible to be constantly happy. It is clear that Aristotle is not saying that a person is going to be constantly happy, I do agree with saying that one has to work towards happiness and it is not necessarily easily achieved. What I do not believe is accurate is that a person has to be happy for the entirety of their life. It is making it seem as if a person is not allowed to go through hardships in order to achieve a full happy life. Though it’s reasonable to say the more bad incidents that occur in ones life will be detrimental to ones happiness, how should that be able to determine how happy one was in their lifetime. This can also apply vice versa, just because a person appeared to live a very happy life doesn’t mean they were actually happy.

Although Aristotle’s belief that your achievements in life make up your happiness can be considered true, you never know what is going on within a persons inner mind. Many times people appear much happier than they really are. No matter how successful someone is or how easily they pursue their goals, that is not that only matter of gaining happiness within life. In fact, there are certain ends that we wish to meet that may be hard and painful to achieve, therefore more detrimental to our happiness until we actually attain the outcome.