The assignment:
Explain Aristotle’s conception of human flourishing (i.e., happiness) in terms of the four causes (i.e., material, efficient, formal, final). Make sure that you mention only those necessary for explaining his conception. (350-400 words)
The product:
In the first book of his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle lays the foundation for what he goes on to say constitutes the best life for human beings. The best human life, he says, is one characterized by eudaimonia, or human flourishing (Ethics 1094a, 1097a-b). This is unique to human beings because we have the capacity for rational, and therefore virtuous, living (1097a). In considering which of the four causes is instrumental in directing human flourishing, we must take note of what makes the faculty of reasoning possible, since that is for Aristotle what makes us capable of virtue (1098a). Therefore, it will be necessary only to mention the formal and final causes, and the former only briefly. Human beings are rational animals: it is a part of their formal cause to be able to exercise reason, which makes them uniquely human (De Anima 414b-415a). However, the formal cause of anything must be understood in light of the end toward which it is directed, that is, its final cause. In considering the final cause of a human being, Aristotle reminds us that, just as the carpenter has as his highest job to do carpentry well, it is the “job” or end of a human being to exercise reason well, insofar as the exercise of reason is common to all human beings (Ethics 1097a). An account of the “best good” for the well-lived human life will necessarily have as its centerpiece a “life of action of the part of the soul that has reason” (1097b-1098a). There are two parts of the rational soul for Aristotle: first, the part that exercises reason insofar as it obeys it; and second, the part that “itself [has] reasoning and thinking” (1098a). If, as Aristotle says, the good human life is one in which the soul expresses reasoning through actions and activity, then “the excellent man’s function is to do this finely and well” (1098a). The virtuous, eudaimon life, then, must be understood as first of all well-reasoned. A human being who cannot effectively and consistently exercise his faculties of reason as Aristotle describes the excellent man will not flourish. The life that is most committed to reason, though, will be the best fulfillment of the human being’s final cause, since a well-reasoned life is intrinsically virtuous. Hence, the human life that fulfills its final cause is the one that will flourish.
This post will hit the web at the moment the class for which this assignment is due begins. It’s the last class of spring semester ‘05! Praise God!
