1. Know thyself; understand your nature.
2. Understand your purposes.
3. Aim for the happy middle.
4. Make it a habit. ‘We are what we repeatedly do.’
5. Be lucky.
6. Be practical.
7. Be part of a group.
One. Understand your nature. Know who and what you are. As we’ve seen from Aristotle’s ethics, derived from his metaphysics, the good in life is determined by our purposes, and our purposes are relative to the kinds of things that we are. As human beings, this means a rational and political animal, a thinking and social being. But that is talking in very general terms. What is important for you to live your good life is for you to understand what you are, as an individual. You will be different from others: that is inevitable. There is no blueprint for who you are, and no others exactly like you. Your nature is your own, at most similar to others but nonetheless unique, and likewise for your circumstances. Your answers, whatever they may be, must be your own.
Some would say that you are the expert on you. Aristotle might be sceptical about that claim. It might be that you need to be educated into understanding what you truly are. You need to be surrounded by good influences – friends and family and society in general – in order to discover your true and best self. But however you get there, whether cooperatively or through personal reflection, what is important is that you do come to some understanding of your nature. The modern history of psychology has left us with a lot of useful words for this purpose. Are you more extroverted or more introverted? Are you more emotional or more intellectual? Are you more independent, preferring your own company, or do you prefer to be connected with people? Do you work well in a team? Etc., etc. You can find your own words. Let’s not make the mistake of thinking that labelling something with a particular word means that you understand that thing, but quasi-scientific words like these can be useful tools.
What matters is that you understand yourself, however you word it. Only in understanding yourself can you make some progress in understanding your purposes relative to yourself, and only then can you align your will to your purposes. If you don’t do this, you will never achieve your purposes, not knowing what they are, and so you will never achieve a good life. Everything depends on understanding yourself. But that is only the starting point.
It’s possible to take a lead from Aristotle’s metaphysical method here. That might sound like a stretch, but bear with me. Remember that Aristotle’s method involved categorising what we see in the world. This allows you to identify sameness and difference, or ‘universal’ and ‘particular’. In coming to understand yourself, the process is really no different: you need to understand what is ‘universal’ and ‘particular’ in yourself. In what ways are you similar with others, and what makes you ‘you’ and different from other people? So point at yourself, as you would point at things in the world, and call it what it is. Take a short-cut from Aristotle and grant that you are a rational ensouled destructible mobile physical thing that is capable of perception; that is, a human being. But what else?
Take myself, for example. I am 5’8”, nearly, on a good day, so not a tall man. Statistically, it would be a struggle for me to be competitive in a sport such as rowing, where height and long levers are a distinct advantage. I can easily recognise this ‘difference’ between myself and a 6’4” man-mountain. And if I can’t, it becomes very obvious when you are side by side in competition. If my purpose was to win that competition, to achieve an objective standard of ‘excellence’, it might be wise to choose a different sport.
Physical attributes are a trivial but clear example. Take something fuzzier, like confidence. I am not a naturally confident person, and I think my circumstances have conspired to further knock what little confidence I might have had. In spite of this, I embarked on an academic life that required a lot of public speaking and, so I thought, a cultivated performance of seeming confident. I never felt comfortable in it. Some people are performers and love that kind of thing. I am not and did not. Was I living in harmony with myself, when I set out on that project to be a good public speaker? In hindsight, if I’d taken a lead from Aristotle’s method and understood my nature a little more, I might have come to see my performance as pretty good relative to my natural attributes. Instead, I expected myself to perform as well as (or better than) someone who was a natural performer, that being the objective standard of excellence. Because of that I always felt like I was falling short; I always felt like I ought to feel more comfortable. I tried everything I could to overcome this, and this process left me quite capable of presenting a passable impression of a confident performance (though only ever occasionally and never always). Piece by piece you construct the ability to perform: Stand tall, breathe, speak slowly and clearly, engage with the audience, move deliberately, don’t be afraid to pause, etc., etc. But it was only ever an impression, a facade, a confidence trick. Fake it to make it, they say; I faked it, but I never made it. I never felt like it was enough, and that in itself is enough to erode your confidence because you always feel like you are failing. And by an objective standard of excellence, I probably was. But by a standard of excellence relative to my nature I was knocking it out the park. I was like a 5’8” rower competing with 6’4” man-mountains. I ought to have seen this as an achievement, but I could not, because I did not understand my nature. If I’d understood my nature better, perhaps I would have chosen a different sport.
Some people are natural performers and are miserable unless they have an audience, and they will say or do anything to get that audience. Some people could not bring themselves to speak in front of people: they freeze up or implode. These are the extreme ends of the spectrum, the vices of excess and deficiency, for the purpose of ‘speaking in public’. I would locate myself on the ‘lower’ end of that spectrum: I’m capable, but I don’t enjoy it. Understanding my nature, I ought to understand that what is more virtuous for me is to become a little more confident than I am. But I should not expect to be totally confident because that is not my nature and it probably wouldn’t be good for me either. I ought to aim for the happy middle. Back when I was lecturing, I ought to have understood that I was already in the happy middle, relative to my nature. But I was confused and was chasing the wrong purposes.
Two. Understand your purposes. Once you understand your nature, then you can explore your purposes and come to understand what, for you, is valuable in life. Aristotle keeps it very simple; there are no great mysteries here: what is valuable in life is what you value in life. Look around, point at it, what do you value? Friends? Family? Success? Those are your purposes. All that remains for you is to work out how to achieve them.
Three. Aim for the happy middle. Once you have identified your purposes, making some progress towards their satisfaction requires you to walk a virtuous line between excess and deficiency. Like the archer aiming at a target, you need to adjust your aim depending on the target’s location. You can fall short, and you can overshoot. What you need to succeed is to hit the happy middle; not too much, not too little.
What this happy middle is will be relative to you and your purposes. There will be as many different ‘right’ answers as there are as many differences in people and in circumstances. It’s impossible for me to tell you what the ‘right’ amount is – for you, for your purposes – because I don’t know you, your circumstances, or your purposes, and so this is something that you will have to navigate as you go along. People who know you better might be more helpful, so you should listen to them because they may provide insight if not instruction.
All you need to remember is to watch out for tending towards too much or tending towards too little. If you understand yourself (see above) then you will know which of these you are more prone to. Some are constantly pushing themselves too hard, some have a tendency to be lazy and indisciplined. We all have a tendency for both at one time or another. Aristotle says that wisdom is nothing more than the ability to recognise this for what it is. Practical wisdom is nothing more than the ability to make the right decisions in response.
Purposes themselves have their own vices of excess and deficiency. You can aim for targets that are far beyond your reach, and you can aim at targets that are so close you can’t miss. If all you want to do is hit targets, then there is some wisdom in bringing the targets closer. (Epicurus will expand on this later.) But if you want something that is beyond your reach, you must be prepared to travel some distance before you are in a position to take a shot.
Some simple examples will put flesh on these bones. Picture two students sitting exams. Both are keen to do well, but their natures are different. One is naturally hard-working and diligent, the other is naturally lazy and indulgent. Who would you identify with?
Do you find yourself working hard, achieving your goals, but not being happy? The suggestion is that you have slipped into the vice of excess: you are too goal-oriented, likely too hard on yourself, and you have forgotten how to give yourself a break. In your pursuit of excellence you have forgotten what is good enough. Aristotle’s method enables you to identify this excess of work-ethic, ambition, and personal standards as a vice and not a virtue. Because of that it allows you to give yourself a break; it is the right thing to do, in this circumstance. You are failing yourself if you are not kinder to yourself, no less than someone would be failing themselves by being too lazy to study for an exam. You ought to stop being so hard on yourself and return to the happy middle.
Do you find yourself slipping into indiscipline, indulging, never prepared and always falling short of your goals? You have some good times, sure, but it’s always a bit unsatisfying in the end? You never achieve your potential. The suggestion is that you have slipped into the vice of deficiency. You have every opportunity to make the right decisions yet you continually let yourself have the freedom to indulge. You know you ought to get up, but you have a lie in; you know you ought to get an early night, but you go out drinking; you know you have work to do, but it remains undone. You will never achieve your purposes this way; you will never have what is valuable to you. You ought to stop being so easy on yourself and return to the happy middle.
Four. Make it a habit. ‘We are what we repeatedly do.’ This was said about Aristotle’s work, but not by Aristotle. But it’s a good phrase. The message is not a complicated one: If you want to be better at something, do that thing, repeatedly. As the old saying goes, practice makes perfect.
No one is perfect, of course. We all have a tendency to drift from our purposes and from the virtuous line balanced between excess and deficiency. What matters is that we repeatedly try to correct ourselves when we go wrong, and encourage ourselves to continue when we are walking that line straight and true. Walking the line of the happy middle is obviously the ideal, but practical wisdom really lies in knowing where the line is and habitually making the choices that bring us back to it.
For Aristotle, virtue is just this state of character concerned with choice. To achieve the state of character, you need to practise by repeatedly making the characteristically right kind of choices. By doing that, it becomes habitual, second nature, and you can choose well without giving it a second thought.
Five. Be lucky. Aristotle is happy enough to concede that there’s a certain amount of luck involved here. You can be the most diligent student imaginable but you can’t stop yourself getting sick on the day of the exam. But as another old saying goes, the more you practise, the luckier you get. Some would say that you make your own luck by making yourself someone who is in a position to receive whatever good fortune might come your way. A diligent and well-prepared student is much more likely to ‘be lucky’ and have the right questions come up on the exam, and they will be better prepared to cope with any bad luck that comes their way, such as sitting the exam sick, if need be. A poorly-prepared student is more likely to ‘be unlucky’ and have the wrong questions come up on the exam, and will be poorly equipped to deal with any other misfortune.
But even so, Aristotle concedes that some people are given natural advantages in life, that they have not earned and yet make a tremendous difference to their chances of success. We can’t call this anything other than luck or good fortune. Some people are born good-looking, to wealthy and powerful parents, who provide them with the best education and opportunities, and eventually a large inheritance. Other people are born ugly, poor, and weak, deprived of any education or opportunities. No one deserves either. But so it goes. Aristotle can do nothing other that point at it and call it as it is. ‘That is lucky’ or ‘that is unlucky’.
Whilst he is honest about the role that luck plays in your life chances, Aristotle is enough of a philosopher to say that nothing much follows from this. Virtue is a state of character concerned with choice, and you can’t choose your parents, so there is no virtue to be had in having the right parents; because of that it is not an ‘excellence’ and so not something to be celebrated. What matters is that you choose wisely in response to whatever fortune comes your way, good or bad.
Six. Be practical. Many philosophers over the ages have been accused of living with their heads in the clouds, showing an other-worldly lack of concern for day-to-day affairs. Not so Aristotle, who reminds us that our higher purposes, whatever they might be, can only be achieved once we have satisfied the basic conditions of our existence. We need enough wealth and security to get by in the world. We need some popularity and status in order to have a group of friends that can help us out when we need. We need a good reputation in order to get and benefit from opportunities. You need good grades to get the chance of a good job. These are all things that can be cultivated but rarely happen by accident. You need to work to get some money; you need to socialise to have friends; you need to manage your reputation in order for people to think well of you; you need to study to get good grades.
These are all things that a Socratic-style philosopher would look at askance, thinking them to be beneath the dignity of a truly philosophical mind. They are just shadows on the wall of the cave. A Socratic philosopher would say that it is the knowledge and understanding that matters and not the grade. And if you have the knowledge, what do you care about the grade? Better to have knowledge and a bad grade than a good grade without knowledge. Better to have reality without reputation than reputation without reality. (Incidentally, that is a paraphrased quotation from Cicero, a later Roman philosopher who did little to move philosophy forward but a great deal to preserve it through his exquisite writing. He will no doubt appear again in this book from time to time.)
But for Aristotle this is unrealistic high-mindedness. You need a good reputation. You certainly ought to have the reality behind the reputation, but you do need the good reputation if you are to have a good life. Let’s be practical about this: if you do well but no one knows about it, then what do you get? Nothing, normally. A student diligently learns everything they need to learn to do well in an exam but then doesn’t sit the exam (for whatever reason). Because they do not demonstrate the ‘reality’ of their learning, then get no grade, no ‘reputation’ of their ‘reality’. And without a grade they are no better-off, in terms of opportunities, than a student who failed because they were hopeless or ignorant. Realistically, grades matter, reputation matters, wealth matters. It would be lovely to pretend that they don’t, but that’s not realistic. And Aristotle is relentlessly realistic. We should trust in what we can observe, remember, and trust theory only if it conforms to what we observe. Look around, and you will observe that good grades make a difference, wealth makes a difference, having friends makes a difference. So be practical and try to get good grades, wealth, and friends. Don’t dismiss them for the sake of philosophical high-mindedness.
Seven. Be part of a group. Aristotle’s political philosophy makes the straightforward observation that many of our purposes as human beings can only be achieved when we work together. This is an obvious fact but one that is easily forgotten in more individualistic societies. The 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes offers a stark picture of human life without organised society: ‘In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’
We need to work together to achieve the conditions necessary for human flourishing. And we need to accept the sacrifices required of us in order that we can work together. We pay our taxes, we abide by the laws of the land, we vote and yet we accept the result when the vote goes against us. Locally, you need to work with your community – your colleagues, friends, and neighbours – for the benefit of all, even if it comes at personal cost.
There is nothing terribly complicated or mysterious about this, but Aristotle’s philosophy makes it clear why a well-functioning society will be composed of people content to work cooperatively. The purpose of a society is to enable us to have the conditions necessary for the achievement of our individual purposes. If they are wise, individuals will recognise that their purposes will only be achieved within a well-functioning society, and therefore they will want to live in a well-functioning society. But they also recognise that a well-functioning society is nothing more than the individuals within it working together. For their own sake, they must want to do their bit for their society: they must participate in order to benefit.
But as true as this may be, in truth this is one oversimplification too far because many problems remain with this view; not least the problem of the ‘freeloader’ who takes all the benefits from a well-functioning society but contributes nothing. It would seem that if the freeloader can get away with it then there is nothing essentially wrong with their behaviour, on an Aristotelian basis, since they are achieving their purposes and allowing society to do the same; and the rest of society would still be better-off for allowing them to continue to behave so, especially if the alternative would disrupt the good functioning of the society. The problem here is a question of ‘justice’ or ‘goodness’ beyond merely ‘achieving purposes’, but that is a signpost pointing down a critical road, an exploration of which does not belong in the section on Aristotle. I will leave it as a question for you to think about: Is there such a thing as goodness beyond the achievement of our purposes? Does ethics serve our purposes, or judge them?
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