Aristotle (384–322 BCE) is one of the great philosophers of ancient Greece’s golden age who, like his teacher Plato, helped define the discipline of philosophy in Western civilization. Aristotle lived in Athens where he founded a school called the Lyceum, and for a time tutored Alexander the Great. The selections below are from Books 1 and 2 of work Nicomachean Ethics, named after his son Nicomachus who may have assembled the text from Aristotle’s lecture notes. Aristotle opens arguing that all human actions aim at some final good, and this final good for us is happiness. The difficult question, though, is determining what exactly “happiness” is. It is neither a matter of pleasure, honor, nor wealth, which are the usual things people associate with happiness. Rather, to understand what our specific human good is, Aristotle argues, we need to understand the purpose and function of human beings.
