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Davis Fischer-Walker
Dr.Sims
Foundation in Critical Studies: Ethics & Justice
9/15/15
In Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle tells people what happiness is and what he thinks
people have to do so that they can be a happy person. In its simplest form, Aristotle says:
In order to be happy, you must do good. I wont tell you what it means to do good, but
here are some examples of people doing good with their occupations. While this is an
interesting way to tell someone how to be happy, especially in todays world where people
say Just be happy!, there is truth to it. Lets take at Antigone and Crone in the Greek
play Antigone. Both of them show signs of being happy, but are they really? Before we
do that, lets dive a little deeper into how Aristotle defines happiness.
So Aristotle has a few different ideas of what happiness is, but the biggest one is
the idea that doing good will lead you to being happy. Now Aristotle only vaguely
described what he means by doing good because he thinks that adding rules or a system
based on math would be to difficult, instead he says that Further, each person judges
rightly what he knows, and is a food judge about that (Aristotle 1095a). Aristotle then
goes on to ask if one can only judge someones happiness at the end of their life. These
are both interesting ways to look at how to be happy and when we think about it a little
these two ideas are almost the same, but one is a micro look at happiness while the other
is more of a macro look. The Micro look of doing good to be happy puts more of an
emphasis on what is happening today, tomorrow, and maybe a few days later. The macro
look at happiness though puts more of an emphasis on looking at comparing happiness

over a set period of time to grief, stress, and things that are seen as generally bad in that
same time frame; which ever one is higher by the end of their life will determine if the
person was happy or not. While neither of these are bad ways of figuring out how to be
happy, when they are applied to Antigone and Creone there is an obvious distinction
between the two of them and how they are happy.
Antigone makes it very obvious that she is happy with her decision; this is why
she was so rude, sarcastic, and pretty much a nuisance to Crone. Now the question isnt if
she was happy, but if Aristotle would consider her happy. Now like I said earlier
Aristotle would pretty much consider anyone who is doing good a happy person. Earlier I
mentioned a quote from Aristotle where he says that the person who is doing the good is
the judge of what is and is not good, but Antigone throws an extra part of the equation
when she poses the idea of natural law/ gods law. Antigone brings this idea up while she
is discussing her plans with Ismene and trys to use is it to get Ismene to aid her, she says
The time in which I must please those that are dead is longer than I must please those of
this world. (Antigone, 164). Antigone would considered herself to be a happy person
because she was laying her brother to rest, which would not only help the town avoid
diseases but it would also save the town from having some ghost haunting them. When
you look at it from the perspective of the gods, she would still be a happy person because
she was laying her family to rest.
Now when we look at Crone we could also tell that he was happy; why else would
he continue to push his point even when there are a lot of reason not to. Now, would
Aristotle consider Crone a happy person? Aristotle would consider Creone happy, under
certain circumstances. In the first few chapters of Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle tells us

that if you want to feel happy than you have to do good. Now Creone believed that he
was doing good under these terms by ruling the land by doing what he thought was good.
This also fit into Aristotles idea that the person who is doing the good should be able to
correctly judge and say weather or not what they are doing is actually good. As
mentioned earlier, Aristotle poses the idea that you can only judge someones happiness
by looking at their past and only at the end of their life. Well at the bitter end of Antigone
the Chorus informs Creon that what he was doing was not very good after all because he
was actually ruling more like a dictator who doesnt care about their subjects instead of
someone who does. We can tell that Creon knows that what he was doing was wrong
because he says, I am afraid it may be the best, in the end of life, to have kept the old
accepted laws (Antigone, 32). Now Aristotle would not consider Creon as happy
person at this point because Creon finally realizes what he has doing is ultimately filled
with grief.
Weather you want to judge your good with a micro idea or a macro idea and if
you want to follow natural law or mans law are both part of the equation that Antigone
and Creon used to try and be happy. Antigone knew this from the beginning and thats
why she buried her brother. Creon knew the same, but had a skewed idea of what doing
good actually was and in the end he paid the ultimate price. In its simplest form all
Aristotle is saying is that if you want to be happy you must do good, and Antigone and
Creon are just two examples.