Is happiness the highest aim or the intermediateaim of all good

An annotation for Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethic’S Book I, chapter 1 to 5

Is happiness the highest aim or the intermediate aim of all good?

 

     The defining of happiness and the aim of the ethics, which is the main steam of discussion starts in chapter 1 of Book I, as Aristotle wrote down, “Every art and inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.”It is from his believing that everything should all aim at some good and later on he also pointed out that many aims are merely intermediate aims, and are desired only because they make the achievement of higher aims possible.

     In chapter 2, it started like this, “If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Aristotle talked about the chief good in our life, and owing to his opinion, he thinks that the one and highest aim we should seek for throughout our whole life should have the qualities same as politics, since “though it isworthwhile to attain the end merely for one man, it is finer and more godlike to attain it for a nation or for city-state.”

     Yet, while in chapter 4, Aristotle questioned about“what is it that we say political science aims at and what is the highest of all good achievable by action?” and he shortly answered the question later, “for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify living well and doing well with being happy; but with regard to what happiness is, they differ, and many do not give the same account as wise.”For the former, which is the general run of men, they consider happiness as some plain and obvious thing like pleasure, wealth or honor. However, they differ from one another – and often, even the same man identifies it with different things, such as identifying happiness with health when he is ill, and with wealth when he is poor.

     So in chapter 5, Aristotle then distinguished three distinct ways of life which different people associate with happiness. First of all, the slavish way of pleasurethat refers to how most people thinks of happiness; second, the refined and active way of politics that aims at honor, and the third, the way of contemplation life which ultimately aims at wisdom. Each of these three happy ways to involve in life represents a specific target that people aim at for their own sake.

     I think happiness should truly be the ultimate goal or end of action of every human, instead of the intermediate aim of all good. Since what will there left when some day we had to face the end of our life? Is it honor, wealth, or fame? Surly none of these will made any difference to us when facing the end of our life, yet whatabout happiness; the memories, our families and friends, the pleasure moments in life? And I like the idea of how Aristotle said about Priam, “many changes occur in life, and all manner of changes and the most prosperous may fail into great misfortunes in old age, as in told of Priamin the Trojan Cycle.” Happiness must be consider over a whole life time, and a truly happy person in life is he who will bear what misfortune brings most beautifully and in complete harmony in every instance, because even in this circumstances, something beautiful shine through.

Referance: Aristotle, "Nicomachean Ethics",350 B.C.E