The Pursuit of Happiness

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics was the first philosophical book I ever read. I began reading it while living in Japan thirty-eight years ago at the age of 26, often carrying the book with me on the train, underlining passages and writing notes in the margins. The book left a lasting impression on me and, more than two decades later, became the subject of my master’s thesis.

This book is an expanded and substantially revised version of that thesis. It has been reorganized, rewritten in contemporary language for the general reader, and includes new chapters that were not part of the original work. These additions present a more complete account of Aristotle’s ethics while remaining faithful to his view that excellence of character and activity in accordance with reason are central to human flourishing.

The title, The Pursuit of Happiness, and subtitle, Living the Best Possible Life, reflect the central theme that has guided my study of Aristotle for many years: what it means to live a meaningful, worthwhile, and fulfilling human life. According to Aristotle, happiness is not merely a feeling or a temporary experience of pleasure as most people understand it, but an enduring way of living that fulfills our distinctive human capacities over the course of a complete life. He defines happiness as the highest, most complete, and self-sufficient human good, containing everything necessary for living a fulfilling human life.

The Pursuit of Happiness captures the universal desire to seek a meaningful and worthwhile life. Living the Best Possible Life emphasizes that happiness is attainable through the exercise of our distinctive human capabilities, which develops excellence of character and enables us to live an excellent, flourishing life. In this book, I use “flourishing” to refer to happiness in the Aristotelian sense and use the terms interchangeably. Human flourishing is happiness understood as fulfilling the distinctive human function through the exercise of our rational capacities, encompassing both ethical and contemplative activity.

Aristotle’s account of the good life, therefore, involves more than a single form of activity. Ethical activity in accordance with reason develops excellence of character, good judgment, and the ability to make good choices. Contemplative activity through the exercise of the intellect—the highest rational element—enables us to understand truths. We live well through ethical activity, but we live the best possible life through contemplative activity, the highest expression of human excellence, and thereby attain the highest and most complete human good: happiness.

Throughout much of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle emphasizes ethical activity, while near the end of the work he gives contemplation a distinctive status in his account of happiness. This apparent tension has led scholars to develop different interpretations of Aristotle’s account of happiness. The Introduction examines these differing conceptions more fully and explains the unified account of human flourishing developed in this book.

ISBN 979-8-9950867-0-3