If everything we do, we do for the sake of happiness, what is happiness? What is it to live well? What is it we are aiming for? Aristotle’s answer here depends on his metaphysical categories. That’s enough to put some people off. But even if we are not on board with his metaphysical reasoning, the answer he gives is profoundly insightful and has been tremendously influential. It’s very much worth some serious consideration.
Let’s begin by outlining Aristotle’s metaphysical reasoning, before we get on to his answer. Maybe you won’t find it so off-putting after all.
Essence or ‘What it is to Be’
Recall that Aristotle traced the hierarchy of what we ‘point at’ and ‘say of’ various things up to the top and called the highest kind of ‘pointing at’ the categories. One of these categories is called ‘substance’, a later Latin-rooted translation of what Aristotle would have called ousia, which can also be translated as ‘essence’.
The word itself doesn’t matter as much as the meaning. For Aristotle it means ‘what it is to be’ something. For later philosophers, substances (or essences) are what make up the world, literally ‘standing beneath’ (sub-stance) what we perceive to exist. There is more dense metaphysical discussion of the notion of ‘substance’ than we can possibly cover here, so we will take a short cut. (Metaphysicians and Heideggerians, forgive me.)
What is our ‘essence’? What defines ‘what it is to be’ us? Well, whilst each of us is unique, each of us is also many things, and one of the things that makes us what we are is our being a human being.
This isn’t something that changes; this is an essential part of what we are. We aren’t accidentally human beings, like we might be hungry one moment or not the next, tired one moment or not the next, or young, or old, or healthy or sick. Each of us is a human being essentially. Our humanity defines in part – in large part – what we are.
What is a Human Being?
What is a human being, according to Aristotle? What defines ‘what it is to be’ human? Aristotle’s categories provide the definitive answer; as they must, because the categories are made up only from what we can observe.
Aristotle’s theory works from the ground up: we should trust observation over theory, and trust theory only if it conforms to observation. Because of this, we know the information about what it is to be human is to be found in those categories somewhere. We just need to think it through to make sense of our observations.
Here is the method: Start from the top of the hierarchy, in the broadest possible terms, and work your way down to the narrowest terms, identifying the relevant observable difference as you go (to be fair to Aristotle, you’ll have to imagine you only have access to the observations that would have been possible for an Ancient Greek; which means no MRI scans or DNA tests or the like):
In the broadest terms, a human being is a physical thing. We observe that some physical things move about (like planets in the sky) and some don’t (like the earth beneath your feet); so physical things can be either mobile or immobile; a human being moves about, so a human being is a mobile physical thing.
Mobile physical things can be eternal (like atoms) or destructible (like things made of parts); human beings age, die, decompose, and can be broken apart, so a human being is a destructible mobile physical thing.
Destructible mobile physical things can be ensouled (showing signs of life, like living things) or unensouled (not showing signs of life, like inanimate objects); a human being shows signs of life, so a human being is an ensouled destructible mobile physical thing.
Ensouled destructible mobile physical things can either be capable of perception (such as animals), or incapable of perception (such as plants); a human being is capable of perception, so a human being is an ensouled destructible mobile physical thing that is capable of perception.
Ensouled destructible mobile physical things that are capable of perception can either be rational (like humans) or not rational (like non-human animals); a human being is rational, so a human being is a rational ensouled destructible mobile physical thing that is capable of perception. This, we find, is what it is to be human.
It’s difficult to be inspired by that definition; it is, admittedly, a little dry. But it has extremely important implications for Aristotle’s conception of what it is to live well.
What is it to Live Well as a Human Being?
According to Aristotle, what is ‘good’ is determined by purposes relative to individuals. To understand what it is to live well, we are looking for the ‘purpose of purposes’, the purpose that all human beings have, which Aristotle identifies as ‘happiness’.
As with all purposes, this is relative to the individual who has it. In this case, we are asking what the ‘purpose of purposes’ is for any human being. So we are asking what it is to ‘live well’ for a human being. We would clearly expect a very different answer if we were asking about what it means to ‘live well’ as a plant.
Aristotle’s great insight is that what it means to ‘live well’ is relative to what kind of thing you are. What it means to ‘live well’ or ‘flourish’ as a plant means something very different than it would to a human being, because plants are very different kinds of things to human beings. Likewise, what it means to ‘live well’ as a lion or an antelope will be very different from what it means to live well as a human being, because human beings are very different from lions and antelopes. And, indeed, lions and antelopes are very different from each other, so what it means to ‘live well’ will be very different for them too.
One conclusion presents itself: what it is to ‘live well’ as a human being will be partly defined by what it is to be a human being.
And we have just defined what it is to be a human being: to be human is to be a rational ensouled destructible mobile physical thing that is capable of perception. We share almost all of this with a non-rational ensouled destructible mobile physical thing that is capable of perception (i.e., a non-human animal), but we, as humans, have one distinct feature: our rationality.
Humans think; we are conscious; we reason. This, both for Aristotle and for many who have come after him, is what defines our ‘essence’ as human beings. We are rational animals.
So if what it means to live well as a human being depends on what it is to be a human being, and what it is to be a human being is to be rational, then what it is to live well depends on being rational. The exercise of reason, through philosophy, is essential to living well as a human being. Philosophy is necessary for happiness.
Once again we echo Socrates: ‘The unexamined life is not worthy of a human being.’ Philosophy is essential to living well as a human being. To live well, we must reflect on what it is to live well, and to do that we need to learn how to think well. We need to ask the right questions in the right way. The answers will probably change over time, across different societies, and among different individuals, because we are all very different and the world is a changeable place. Purposes change all the time. But what we are as human beings does not change all that much. We still have purposes, and reason, and we can apply that reason to evaluate those purposes.
According to Aristotle, that is the route to happiness, and that is happiness.
Read more: Think Well, Live Well: A Free Introduction to Philosophy
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