> 11. “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

That's a poor way of framing his beliefs about this. The correct framing is more like “Virtue and being a Good Human Being is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

Happiness should stem from being a good human being; happiness itself is not the origin of virtue or purpose.

If personal sacrifice brings genuine well-being to your family or community, that could be a very virtuous and rewarding thing to do, and as such, should make you content and satisfied with your actions and their outcomes. That's how you find eudaemonia; that state of 'happiness' he's describing. While you haven't sought out your immediate personal happiness or gratification, you can still feel good in a morally derivative, intellectual manner (which could also make you genuinely happy or content, too). The bible is big on this theme, as well.

Humans are political animals to Aristotle, and our prosociality and duty to others was crucial to how we measured ourselves and our obligations to society. Personal happiness in a contemporary, conventional sense wasn't very important in that scope. Our ability to be satisfied with, and take gratification from, our service to others was a major part of how you'd derive that contentedness and eudaimonic state of mind.

It seems important to make that distinction, because most people's interpretation of that quote (I don't think it's an actual quote) would be relatively hedonic or epicurean. Everything you do should be in the pursuit of feeling good.

Actually reading Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics is worth it. Not because he's right about everything (he has some pretty messed up and weird views), but because it's challenging and good to think on, and chances are you'll take something away for yourself that you wouldn't have gotten from some webpage that took one-liners out of context, some of which aren't even by Aristotle.

The level of precision a subject can reach is peculiar to that subject, but it doesn't follow that nothing can be accurately predicated of it:

"It is characteristic of such knowledge [ethics] that it should be deficient in “exactness,” in precision of statement, and closeness of logical concatenation. We must not look for a mathematics of conduct. The subject-matter of Human Conduct is not governed by necessary and uniform laws. But this does not mean that it is subject to no laws."

"[T]he man of education will seek exactness so far in each subject as the nature of the thing admits, it being plainly much the same absurdity to put up with a mathematician who tries to persuade instead of proving, and to demand strict demonstrative reasoning of a Rhetorician."

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8438/8438-h/8438-h.htm

FWIW, I got a lot more about virtue ethics from reading Plato's works, the Stoics, and Cicero. Aristotle is somewhat dry and tedious to read. Go for him if you're into formal logic and related technical systems. But if you're truly interested in virtue ethics and have some reading discipline, try Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.

On Marcus Aurelius: he's often recommended mindlessly (especially in tech circles). I actually to suggest to read him last. He does have valuable things to say, but he's the most depressive of the Big Three Stoics. You can better appreciate Aurelius if you've already digested some Socratic dialogues and Epictetus. One of the top-most Stoicism scholars (A. A. Long) describes Marcus Aurelius this way: "a melancholy emperor, who was hardly a card-carrying Stoic".

FWIW, here's[1] my recommended reading order and top English translations from five years ago. Cut out the cheap rehashes by people such as Ryan Holiday and stick to the originals. A bonus note[2] on the Roman gem, Cicero, from six years ago.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990579

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24638573

The first quote is not even a quote from Aristotle but from Will Durant’s book, The Story of Philosophy (1926)

Daoist conceptions of virtue can be described as “cosmic spontaneity”

https://sourcelibrary.org/book/chuang-tzu-mystic-moralist-an...

My Philosophy 101 in college was Nichomean Ethics, and I think to this day was one of the most important classes I ever took.

> 2. "Happiness depends upon ourselves."

he's quiet possibly referring to happiness as a relationship (with family, friends, colleagues, citizens etc) rather than just by oneself / isolation / individual. he famously said "man by nature is a political animal" (or social if you prefer)

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Aristotle never said this. It's Will Durant.

https://medium.com/the-mission/my-favourite-quote-of-all-tim...

https://old.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/s2n3s/source...

This invalidates the post for me, it takes it from academic research to fanboy posting.

Much of this is either simply not Aristotle, or a paraphrase from one of his works incorrectly attributed to another. My slop meter is pinging.

Edit:

Between the misattributions, fabricated quotes, listicle format, thin explanatory paragraphs, and use of “delve” (posted Nov 2024 - during ChatGPT’s Delve Era), this is a pretty embarrassing thing for a Liberal Arts college to post.

> "Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies."

What a cool way to convey the benefits of having strong friendships.

If you ever wondered, those are among the things that made that single person standing out of the crowd od Humanity for more than two thousands years.<3

  The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

Reminds me of Charlie Munger's Inversion principle that he borrowed from German mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi's man muss immer umkehren. https://fs.blog/inversion/

  We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

As counter points, read Cedirc Chin's Problems with deliberate practice, https://commoncog.com/the-problems-with-deliberate-practice/ and Sensemaking as the heart of expertise, https://commoncog.com/sensemaking-heart-of-expertise/

  It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

This Amjad Masad comment lives rent-free in my head: "Tolerating some amount of cognitive dissonance is one of the best things that I was able to develop in myself ... people don't update their beliefs when new evidence comes to light ... The drive to avoid cognitive dissonance shackles you to your existing beliefs (see confirmation bias)". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11799477 (2016).

cf. Why people that are often right change their minds often, https://fs.blog/some-advice-from-jeff-bezos/

Nice!

bro just read the book Aristotle did not run a twitter account

You know I always found it odd/unfair how religions were founded around Jesus, Muhammed etc but not for Aristotle, Socrates etc.

it do be like that

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