Happiness and the Good Life

Abstract

Near the end of his paper Carson says that, although he has not done "enough to refute the view that happiness is an 'inclusive gooď in the way that Aristotle conceived," he believes that he has destroyed "any motivation there may be for accepting Aristotle's view" (pp. 85-86). And he asserts, in conclusion, that, if his arguments are well taken, "happiness is not nearly as important a concept as many philosophers have thought" (p. 86) . In this note I shall argue that Carson's attack on Aristotle's position that happiness ( eudaimonia ) is an "inclusive good" fails for several reasons, the chief of which is that the concept of happiness which he employs in his criticism of Aristotle's view is quite unAristotelian. Though Carson's arguments should convince us that "contentment," or "being satisfied with one's life,"2 is not an "inclusive good," Aristotle's notion of eudaimonia is not merely a notion of contentment, and we are given no reason to believe that his notion is a spurious one. In Section I, I shall briefly articulate one pertinent concept of an "inclusive good" and make some general comments on the status of Aristotle's notion of eudaimonia , as employed in Book 1 of the Nico machean Ethics (NE). Then, in Section II, I shall assess Carson's attack and exhibit the major shortcomings of the three arguments in which the attack consists. I shall conclude, in Section III, with a point about the evaluability of Aristotle's view.