Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: The Chief Human Good

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Throughout Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle addresses the importance of happiness and what it means to seek happiness. Discussing the main principles of what forms happiness can take and how humans display their happiness, Aristotle forms his opinion around the idea of the chief human good, which is also referred to as eudaimonia. Aristotle uses this to base his instrumental reasoning that all things are done by a human for the sake of happiness. This idea of the chief good is in Chapter 7 where Aristotle said, “Happiness in particular is believed to be complete without qualifications, since we always choose it for itself and never the sake of anything else” (Book 1, 1097b). The chief end of all things is the human good based on virtue and alternative conceptions of happiness. T.D. Roche indulges on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics by explaining his ideas …show more content…
The two kinds of virtue that can be within someone are an intellectual virtue and a moral virtue. While people are taught moral virtues through practice and perseverance, intellectual virtue is learnt through experience. Virtue is a mean of a behavioral disposition inside of every person. Due to the fact that virtues are analogous with the specific person, Aristotle mentions, “Virtue, then is a state involving rational choice consisting in a mean relative to us and determined by reason” (Book 2, 1107a). It is important that one finds a happy medium within their virtuous actions and too much or too little can ruin one as a whole. These amounts differ person to person and if one’s goal is a happy life then it is imperative for them to find these proper amounts within their virtues. This is one of the main themes in Book 2 and Aristotle says to “avoid excess and deficiency, and aim for the mean and choose it – the mean, that is, not in the thing itself but relative to us” (Book 2,
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