Eudaimonia: The Good Life as Flourishing

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics begins by asking what the highest good for humans is. Everyone agrees it is eudaimonia, usually translated as happiness but better understood as flourishing or living well. Aristotle argued that the good for any thing depends on its function: a good knife cuts well. The distinctive human function is rational activity, so human flourishing is the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, over a complete life.

This makes happiness an activity rather than a feeling, and a lifelong achievement rather than a moment; as he put it, one swallow does not make a spring. Aristotle also admitted that external goods such as health, friends and some wealth matter, and that great misfortune can spoil a life. In Book 10 he praised the life of contemplation as the highest. His account contrasts with views that equate happiness with pleasure.