Preface: The Pursuit of Happiness

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics was the first philosophical book I ever read. I began reading it in April 1988 while living in Japan at the age of 26, often riding the train with the book in hand, underlining passages and writing notes in the margins. The book left a lasting impression on me, and more than twenty years later it became the focus of my graduate thesis. Fifteen years later, this book is an expanded and updated version of that thesis, incorporating examples from today’s world and written in contemporary language for the general reader, while seeking to preserve Aristotle’s view that excellence in character and rational activity are central to human happiness.

What external goods and qualities of character are required for a human being to flourish? More specifically, to what extent are goods such as wealth, friendship, and material resources necessary, and what excellences—such as justice, patience, understanding, reliability, and fortitude—must a person possess to live a flourishing, complete, and self-sufficient life?

Throughout much of the Ethics, Aristotle argues that happiness consists in ethical activity. Yet near the end of the work, he appears to identify happiness primarily with contemplative activity. At the same time, he suggests that happiness also requires external goods such as friendship, health, and other necessities of life.

Because of these different descriptions, two major interpretations of Aristotle’s view have emerged. One interpretation, often called “intellectualism,” holds that contemplative activity is the highest and most complete form of happiness, while ethical activity plays a secondary role. Another interpretation, known as “inclusivism,” maintains that happiness consists in a combination of goods, including ethical activity, friendship, pleasure, honor, health, and contemplation.

This book presents a unified account of human flourishing in which ethical and contemplative activity complement and support one another within a hierarchical order of human activities. Human beings flourish through thoughtful action and contemplative understanding as an ongoing way of living—a continuous practice sustained over a lifetime. Rather than competing ideals, ethical and contemplative activity are interconnected aspects of a complete human life directed toward happiness.

Aristotle’s account of happiness therefore includes both ethical and intellectual excellences, with contemplation understood not as withdrawal from life but as a way of understanding and engaging more deeply with it. Since the excellences are developed through life in society, both ethical and contemplative activity are essential to human flourishing. Together, they provide a comprehensive account of happiness and what it means to fulfill the art of living well.