ACLC COLLEGE OF ORMOC

THE HUMAN NATURE AND 'EUDAIMONIA'

ACCORDING TO ARISTOTLE

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE SUBJECT

INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF HUMAN
PERSON

SUBMITTED BY:
SHAIRA A. MEJARES
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. BIOGRAPHY
II. HUMAN NATURE AND 'EUDAIMONIA' ACCORDING TO ARISTOTLE
III. CONCLUSION
IV. REFERENCES
I. BIOGRAPHY OF ARISTOTLE
The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) made significant and lasting contributions to
nearly every aspect of human knowledge, from logic to biology to ethics and aesthetics.
Though overshadowed in classical times by the work of his teacher Plato, from late antiquity
through the Enlightenment, Aristotle’s surviving writings were incredibly influential. In
Arabic philosophy, he was known simply as “The First Teacher”; in the West, he was “The
Philosopher.”

Aristotle’s Early Life

Aristotle was born in 384 B.C. in Stagira in northern Greece. Both of his parents were
members of traditional medical families, and his father, Nicomachus, served as court
physician to King Amyntus III of Macedonia. His parents died while he was young, and he
was likely raised at his family’s home in Stagira. At age 17 he was sent to Athens to enroll in
Plato's Academy. He spent 20 years as a student and teacher at the school, emerging with both
a great respect and a good deal of criticism for his teacher’s theories. Plato’s own later
writings, in which he softened some earlier positions, likely bear the mark of repeated
discussions with his most gifted student. When Plato died in 347, control of the Academy
passed to his nephew Speusippus. Aristotle left Athens soon after, though it is not clear
whether frustrations at the Academy or political difficulties due to his family’s Macedonian
connections hastened his exit. He spent five years on the coast of Asia Minor as a guest of
former students at Assos and Lesbos. It was here that he undertook his pioneering research
into marine biology and married his wife Pythias, with whom he had his only daughter, also
named Pythias. In 342 Aristotle was summoned to Macedonia by King Philip II to tutor his
son, the future Alexander the Great—a meeting of great historical figures that, in the words of
one modern commentator, “made remarkably little impact on either of them.”

Aristotle and the Lyceum

Aristotle returned to Athens in 335 B.C. As an alien, he couldn’t own property, so he rented
space in the Lyceum, a former wrestling school outside the city. Like Plato’s Academy, the
Lyceum attracted students from throughout the Greek world and developed a curriculum
centered on its founder’s teachings. In accordance with Aristotle’s principle of surveying the
writings of others as part of the philosophical process, the Lyceum assembled a collection of
manuscripts that comprised one of the world’s first great libraries.
Aristotle’s Works
It was at the Lyceum that Aristotle probably composed most of his approximately 200 works,
of which only 31 survive. In style, his known works are dense and almost jumbled, suggesting
that they were lecture notes for internal use at his school. The surviving works of Aristotle are
grouped into four categories. The “Organon” is a set of writings that provide a logical toolkit
for use in any philosophical or scientific investigation. Next come Aristotle’s theoretical
works, most famously his treatises on animals (“Parts of Animals,” “Movement of Animals,”
etc.), cosmology, the “Physics” (a basic inquiry about the nature of matter and change) and
the “Metaphysics” (a quasi-theological investigation of existence itself). Third are Aristotle’s
so-called practical works, notably the “Nicomachean Ethics” and “Politics,” both deep
investigations into the nature of human flourishing on the individual, familial and societal
levels. Finally, his “Rhetoric” and “Poetics” examine the finished products of human
productivity, including what makes for a convincing argument and how a well-wrought
tragedy can instill cathartic fear and pity.

The Organon
“The Organon” (Latin for “instrument”) is a series of Aristotle’s works on logic (what he
himself would call analytics) put together around 40 B.C. by Andronicus of Rhodes and his
followers. The set of six books includes “Categories,” “On Interpretation,” “Prior Analytics,”
“Posterior Analytics,” “Topics,” and “On Sophistical Refutations.” The Organon contains
Aristotle’s worth on syllogisms (from the Greek syllogismos, or “conclusions”), a form of
reasoning in which a conclusion is drawn from two assumed premises. For example, all men
are mortal, all Greeks are men, therefore all Greeks are mortal.

Metaphysics
Aristotle’s “Metaphysics,” written quite literally after his “Physics,” studies the nature of
existence. He called metaphysics the “first philosophy,” or “wisdom.” His primary area of
focus was “being qua being,” which examined what can be said about being based on what it
is, not because of any particular qualities it may have. In “Metaphysics,” Aristotle also muses
on causation, form, matter and even a logic-based argument for the existence of God.

Rhetoric
To Aristotle, rhetoric is “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of
persuasion.” He identified three main methods of rhetoric: ethos (ethics), pathos (emotional)
and logos (logic). He also broke rhetoric into types of speeches: epideictic (ceremonial),
forensic (judicial) and deliberative (where the audience is required to reach a verdict). His
groundbreaking work in this field earned him the nickname “the father of rhetoric.”
Poetics
Aristotle’s “Poetics” was composed around 330 B.C. and is the earliest extant work of
dramatic theory. It is often interpreted as a rebuttal to his teacher Plato’s argument that poetry
is morally suspect and should therefore be expunged from a perfect society. Aristotle takes a
different approach, analyzing the purpose of poetry. He argues that creative endeavors like
poetry and theater provides catharsis, or the beneficial purging of emotions through art.

Aristotle’s Death and Legacy

After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C., anti-Macedonian sentiment again forced
Aristotle to flee Athens. He died a little north of the city in 322, of a digestive complaint. He
asked to be buried next to his wife, who had died some years before. In his last years he had a
relationship with his slave Herpyllis, who bore him Nicomachus, the son for whom his great
ethical treatise is named. Aristotle’s favored students took over the Lyceum, but within a few
decades the school’s influence had faded in comparison to the rival Academy. For several
generations Aristotle’s works were all but forgotten. The historian Strabo says they were
stored for centuries in a moldy cellar in Asia Minor before their rediscovery in the first
century B.C., though it is unlikely that these were the only copies. In 30 B.C. Andronicus of
Rhodes grouped and edited Aristotle’s remaining works in what became the basis for all later
editions. After the fall of Rome, Aristotle was still read in Byzantium and became well-known
in the Islamic world, where thinkers like Avicenna (970-1037), Averroes (1126-1204) and the
Jewish scholar Maimonodes (1134-1204) revitalized Aritotle’s logical and scientific precepts.

Aristotle in the Middle Ages and Beyond

In the 13th century, Aristotle was reintroduced to the West through the work of Albertus
Magnus and especially Thomas Aquinas, whose brilliant synthesis of Aristotelian and
Christian thought provided a bedrock for late medieval Catholic philosophy, theology and
science. Aristotle’s universal influence waned somewhat during the Renaissance and
Reformation, as religious and scientific reformers questioned the way the Catholic Church
had subsumed his precepts. Scientists like Galileo and Copernicus disproved his geocentric
model of the solar system, while anatomists such as William Harvey dismantled many of his
biological theories. However, even today, Aristotle’s work remains a significant starting point
for any argument in the fields of logic, aesthetics, political theory and ethics.
II. HUMAN NATURE AND 'EUDAIMONIA' ACCORDING TO ARISTOTLE

ARISTOTLE ON HUMAN NATURE

Being alive. Aristotle’s discussion of human nature in Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics
takes the ‘soul’ to identify what is essential to being human. Before we look at that
discussion, we should examine the background to this remark, in particular Aristotle’s views
on the relationship
between the soul and being alive. Aristotle’s conception of ‘soul’ is not equivalent to ours –
viz. some form of identification with the mind or the psychological. The soul is what gives
life, not just consciousness, for Aristotle: “life is the being [ousia - essence] of living things,
and the
soul is the cause and first actuality of this” (De Anima 415b13-14). Don’t worry about the
technical terms here; the quotation demonstrates that soul and life apply to exactly the
same things. To understand a living thing, we must understand that it is alive – this is its
nature. Different living things have different kinds (or parts of) soul. In the Ethics,
Aristotle identifies two fundamental parts: the rational and the non-rational. Within the
non-rational, there is the part of nutrion and growth, which all living things must have to
be alive; that of locomotion, perception and sensation (in animals); and that of appetites,
desires and emotions, which is responsive to reason. The rational part is possessed by
humans alone.

What does Aristotle mean by ‘parts’ of the soul? There is some debate about this. In a
being with more than one part, they may not be separable, but they are at least
‘conceptually’ distinct. There is a difference between faculties of sensation, of desire, of
reasoning. Aristotle’s main argument that these faculties are ‘parts’ is just that some
creatures have all of them, some of only some or just one (De Anima 413b33).
The type of soul one gives one’s nature as a living thing. Human beings are essentially
living things. What kind? The kind that has all parts of the soul, including rationality. It
was Aristotle who said human beings are ‘rational animals’. This is the background to his
claim, at the end of Book I of the Ethics, that there are two parts of the soul relevant to
moral virtue, a part capable of reason and a part capable of obeying reason, constituted
by desires and emotions. Virtue is found in the obedience of the emotional (or
‘passionate’) part of the soul to the rational (NE 1102b27).

Function. The type of soul one has indicates what kinds of things one is capable of. Plants
can only be nourished, grow and reproduce. Animals have sensation and movement in
addition.
Human beings are capable of rationality. Central to Aristotle’s understanding of the
nature of anything is ergon. The term has usually been translated as ‘function’, but this can
be misleading if it suggests a purpose. ‘Function’ here is better understood in relation to
‘functioning’ rather than ‘purpose’. What is it that something is doing when it is
functioning, when it is performing the activities that are characteristic of it? So ergon is
best understood as ‘characteristic form of activity’.
This translation covers all types of ‘functioning’, from artefacts to organs to species. For
example, the ergon of an eye is to see. The ergon of a knife is to cut. The ergon of a
particular species of plant is to grow, flower, and reproduce in the way specific to its
species. That gives us an understanding of its nature, of what it is to be that sort of thing.
Since we want to know about human nature, we need to identify the ergon of human
beings. A skeletal answer to this question is given in the so-called ‘function argument’ of NE
I.7. Aristotle’s understanding of ergon was part and parcel of his theory of biology, which
involved the view that nature never does anything without reason and never repeats.
Each, in other words, is appointed to its place. Ergon is therefore understood as distinctive
characteristic activity, which singles the particular type of thing out. What is characteristic
of human beings is also what is distinctive of them: ‘Life seems to be common even to
plants, but we are seeking what is peculiar to man. Let us exclude, therefore, the life of
nutrition and growth. Next there would be a life of perception, but it also seems to be
common even to the horse, the ox, and every animal. There remains, then, an active life
of the element that has a rational principle… the function of man to be a certain kind of
life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul implying a rational principle’.
This claim that the human ergon is a life of activity in accordance with reason requires further
content – how are we to understand what is ‘in accordance with reason’? If this is meant
as a substantive question – viz. what do we have reason to do? – then we must defer the
answer to an investigation of the good life. A different problem faces us immediately.
Many commentators misunderstand Aristotle to be claiming that reasoning is our ergon.
But I believe Aristotle makes a deeper point – what is characteristic of us is that whatever
we do, we do for reasons. Human beings, throughout their lives – in their nourishment,
perception, as well as desires, emotions and thought – make use of reasoning. For
example, we don’t just eat, we eat what is healthy or pleasurable. All our activities – not just
‘reasoning’ – are guided by ‘reasoning’. We are creatures of practical and theoretical
reasoning; this is human nature.

Flourishing. This forms the basis for Aristotle’s view of ethics. Fulfilling our nature is what
living is all about. The ‘characteristic activity’ provides an insight into what type of thing
something is. But it also thereby provides the basis for an evaluative standard for that thing –
for something is doing or ‘functioning’ well when it performs its characteristic activity well.
So a good knife cuts well; a good eye sees well; a good plant flourishes. Aristotle adds
further that, because we understand what something is according to its ergon, when it
fulfils its ergon well, it is most what it is (the idea of a good example).
We have an idea of what it is for a plant or animal to ‘flourish’, to ‘do well’, to be a good
specimen of its species; we can provide an analysis of its needs and when those needs are
met in abundance. ‘The good’ or the ‘good life’ for human beings as the particular sorts
of being we are, that to achieve it is to ‘live well’, living as best a human being can live.
Since we live in accordance with reason, flourishing is doing this well. What does this
mean? Well, there are good reasons and bad reasons. Bad reasons aren’t really reasons at
all. To fulfil our ergon and live well, we must be guided by good reasons.
Being guided by reasons is natural to us; but being guided by good reasons is not natural,
but requires training. Aristotle understands the virtues – traits that enable us to live well –
as being of two kinds, intellectual and moral: ‘intellectual virtue in the main owes both its
birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time), while
moral virtue comes about as a result of habit, whence also its name (aythikay) is one that
is formed by a slight variation from the word ethos (habit). From this it is also plain that
none of the moral virtues arises in us by nature’ (NE II.1).

Against the view that virtues can be ‘natural’, Aristotle gives two arguments. First, given
that virtues are dispositions to feel and behave in certain ways, we come to form these by
what we do: but ‘of all the things that come to us by nature we first acquire the
potentiality and later exhibit the activity’. For example, you don’t acquire sight by seeing;
first you have sight, then you can see. But ‘the virtues we get by first exercising them, as
also happens in the case of the arts as well [e.g. learning to play a musical instrument].
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.’ We are
not naturally virtuous, but we are naturally capable of becoming virtuous, just as we are
not born musical but can become so. Hence, ‘by doing the acts that we do in our
transactions with other men we become just or unjust, and by doing the acts that we do
in the presence of danger, and by being habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become
brave or cowardly…It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one
kind or of another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather all the
difference.’ (II.1)

But some people are more ‘naturally musical’ than others; couldn’t this be so with virtue?
Yes, Aristotle allows that we can have good dispositions from birth, e.g. someone might
be naturally kind. But this doesn’t amount to ‘full virtue’. A fully virtuous action is one
that requires the agent to know what it is they are doing, to choose the act because it is in
accordance with virtue (Aristotle describes this as ‘choosing the act for its own sake’),
and to make the choice from a firm and unchangeable character (II.4). A naturally kind
child doesn’t fully comprehend the nature of their action, and could easily be misled into
being kind for the wrong reasons or at the wrong time. Without practical wisdom, virtue
has developed into its fullest form. But just because we must develop to become virtuous, this
doesn’t mean virtues go against our nature either: ‘nothing that exists by nature can form a
habit contrary to its nature… Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues
arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit’
(NE II.1).
ARISTOTLE ON EUDAEMONIA

Eudaimonia, also spelled eudaemonia, in Aristotelian ethics, the condition of human

flourishing or of living well. The conventional English translation of the ancient Greek term,
“happiness,” is unfortunate because eudaimonia, as Aristotle and most other ancient
philosophers understood it, does not consist of a state of mind or a feeling of pleasure or
contentment, as “happiness” (as it is commonly used) implies. For Aristotle, eudaimonia is
the highest human good, the only human good that is desirable for its own sake (as an end in
itself) rather than for the sake of something else (as a means toward some other end).

According to Aristotle, every living or human-made thing, including its parts, has a unique or
characteristic function or activity that distinguishes it from all other things. The highest good
of a thing consists of the good performance of its characteristic function, and the virtue or
excellence of a thing consists of whatever traits or qualities enable it to perform that function
well. (Thus, the virtue or excellence of a knife is whatever enables the good performance of
cutting, that of an eye whatever enables the good performance of seeing, and so on.) It follows
that eudaimonia consists of the good performance of the characteristic function of human
beings, whatever that may be, and human virtue or excellence is that combination of traits or
qualities that enables humans to perform that function well. Aristotle believes that the
characteristic function of human beings, that which distinguishes them from all other things,
is their ability to reason. Accordingly, “if the function of man is an activity of soul which
follows or implies a rational principle,” and if the human good is the good performance of that
function, then the “human good turns out to be [rational] activity of soul in accordance with
virtue,” or rational activity performed virtuously or excellently (Nichomachean Ethics, Book
I, chapter 7).

In each of his two ethical treatises, the Nichomachean Ethics and the (presumably earlier)
Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle proposed a more specific answer to the question “What is
eudaimonia?,” or “What is the highest good for humans?” The two answers, however, appear
to differ significantly from each other, and it remains a matter of debate whether they really
are different and, in any case, how they are related. In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle
held that eudaimonia consists of philosophical or scientific contemplation in accordance with
the intellectual virtues of (theoretical) wisdom and understanding, but he also allowed that
action in the political sphere, in accordance with (practical) wisdom and the moral virtues,
such as justice and temperance, is eudaimon (“happy”) in a “secondary degree” (Book X,
chapter 8). In the Eudemian Ethics, he maintained that eudaimonia consists of activity of the
soul in accordance with “perfect” or “complete” virtue, by which he meant (according to
some interpretations) all the virtues, both intellectual and moral (Eudemian Ethics, Book II,
chapter 1). According to both answers, it should be noted, eudaimonia is an activity (or a
range of activities) rather than a state, and it necessarily involves the exercise of reason.
Moreover, the intellectual and moral virtues or excellences of which it is constituted are not
innate talents or quickly acquired forms of knowledge but rather are abiding traits that arise
 only through long habituation, reflection, and the benefits of appropriate social experiences
and circumstances (including material circumstances). For that reason, eudaimonia must be
the achievement of a “complete life,” or at least much of a life: “For one swallow does not
make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man
blessed and happy” (Nichomachean Ethics, Book I, chapter 7). In the mid-20th century,
eudaemonism, or the philosophical theory of human well-being, and virtue ethics were
revived as sophisticated and psychologically more realistic alternatives to action-based ethical
theories such as deontology and consequentialism (see also utilitarianism), each of which
seemed to entail counterintuitive conclusions despite complicated theoretical modifications
over the course of two centuries.

III. CONCLUSION
According to Aristotle, all human functions contribute to eudaimonia, 'happiness'. Happiness
is an exclusively human good; it exists in rational activity of soul conforming to virtue. This
rational activity is viewed as the supreme end of action, and so as man's perfect and self-
sufficient end. Again for Aristotle, the term episteme, 'science', indicates a special quality of
knowledge, viz. truth as derived from premises priorly known, and with greater clarity than
the conclusion. One's perception of a conjunction of vital operations found only in man is the
starting point for such episteme. Philosophy can also analyze the nature of virtue, a
specifically human form of habit. Taking all human activities and qualities into its scope,
philosophy can develop a scientific concept of the whole of human nature. But only the
operations of reason and the quality of virtue are immediate principles of eudaimonia. A
careful study of them reductively provides knowledge of the whole of man. Within a
eudaimonistic focus, human reason has two important functions. These occur in the
theoretical activity of contemplation and in the practical activity of discerning the good for
one's conduct. A mature human being can perform both of these activities entirely on his own.
Each activity is perfect and self-sufficient; each is, therefore, evidence of the wholeness and
self-sufficiency of human nature. Human virtue connotes an ease of action; it facilitates the
activity of theoretical and practical reason. Thus virtue makes it easier to live well as a human
being and so to be happy. As a well established inner quality, virtue is a permanent occasion
of the activity proper to man. With reason and virtue as immediate principles, Aristotle's man
is capable of self-constitution. In light of these main results a generally compelling scientific
knowledge of man is possible. Some tangential results concern the relations between
philosophical, medical and sociological/psychological knowledge of man, problems with a
function-oriented axiology, and the seminal influence of Aristotle on Western concepts of the
person.
IV. REFERENCES

https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-greece/aristotle#:~:text=Aristotle%20was%20born
%20in%20384,his%20family's%20home%20in%20Stagira.

https://www.alevelphilosophy.co.uk/handouts_ethics/AristotleHumanNature.pdf

https://www.britannica.com/topic/eudaimonia