THE UGLY, THE LONELY AND THE LOWLY: ARISTOTLE ON HAPPINESS AND THE EXTERNAL GOODS.

(Mathew Cashen)
It´s hard to be happy when physically unattractive or when born into and undistinguished family or when
alone and childless.
What Aristotle sound perfectly plain: people often feel unhappy with or insecure about the way they look,
and those without family or friends do miss out on a dimension of happiness that could enrich their lives.
“happy” Aristotle does not mean what we mean today. For him, to be happy, or eudaemon, is to be
actively engaged in the life of virtue. So, the puzzle is this: what do appearance, family, and social life
have to do with the ability to act with justice, courage, and moderation?
Aristotle divides human goods:

 Goods external to the soul: goods of the body or somatic goods like physical fitness and
attractiveness, and goods external to the body, or Aristotle sometimes calls them, external goods.
(Ta ektos agatha) like wealth, political influence, and friendship.
 Good of the soul. (Psychological goods) ta peri psychén agatha)
The external goods are largely the product of luck. Aristotle unambiguously thinks that happiness requires
these goods, as his remark about the ugly, and the lowly illustrates. But because he defines happiness as
virtuous psychological activity. That definition seems to imply that happiness consists singly in virtue.
Why should any goods external to the soul impact happiness when these have so little to with the
character, choice and action?
According to the traditional monist interpretation, defended lately by Richard Kraut, Aristotle maintain
throughout EN that happiness consists singly in virtues action and the external goods, therefore, impact
happiness only indirectly.
T.H Irwin, John Cooper, and Martha Nusbaum among others, defend an inclusivist interpretation of
happiness, however Aristotle defines the happy life as a life that is both actively virtuous and sufficiently
equipped with external goods. Because on this view, external goods are included among constituents of
happiness, Aristotle is able to maintain that their possession or deprivation can impact happiness directly,
irrespective of its impact on virtuous activity.
The monist they charge, is stuck with implausibly narrow view. In this paper, I aim to defend monism
against this charge. I will advance a new monist interpretation of the external goods.
First, that Aristotelian happiness consist singly in living a virtuous life, as monist maintain, and next, that
loneliness and marginalization can imped happiness directly, insofar as they prevent us from enjoying life
and finding it subjectively satisfying, as inclusivists maintain.
2. THE ENDOXA.
Eudaimonia fits perfectly with both street Greek and Aristophonic slapstick. Aristotle recognized that any
philosopher who would co-opt the term for his own philosophical purposes must respect what people
ordinarily say about it and that we, therefore, should count any theoretical analysis of happiness as
unacceptable if the concept that emerges from that analysis is unrecognizable from the perspective of
people´s folk understanding on it.
It is unreasonable to think most people views are entirely wrong; instead, they get at least something right
or even most things (EN 1098B28.30)
Even though there is relatively little consensus on what precisely happiness is (1095a14ff), the few points
on which there is agreement outline the parameters to which theories of happiness must conform: they are
endoxa.
Aristotle take it that everyone agrees that the happy life is necessarily is pleasant (EN1099a6-26, cf
1153b14)
I would fail at realizing my own happiness. As Aristotle puts it, to possess a virtue is to be a lover
(philotoioutos) of that virtue (1099a8); and, in fact, the central aim of moral education is to habituate us
into loving and finding pleasant the right things.
Now, it the happy life is necessarily pleasant, a commonsensical explanation of the relationship between
happiness and the external goods emerges; the external goods are important to happiness because their
deprivation causes pain, or better, because causes frustration, dissatisfaction, discomfort, isolation, or
disappointment.
3. Monism.
Monism is the view that Aristotle is consistent throughout EN in thinking that happiness consists
exclusively in the exercise of a virtuous character though virtuous activity, when Aristotle claims that the
ugly, the lonely, and the lowly are not entirely happy, he cannot mean that, in lacking good looks or a
good family, they lack some constituent elements of happiness: if happiness consists only in the
psychological goods, then the external goods cannot themselves be among its constituents Instead, the
monist argues that nonpsychological good are valuable only insofar as they make the exercise of virtue
possible.
Aristotle equates happiness with virtuous activity and treats other goods not as components of the
ultimate end but as the equipment one need to attain it.
The value of the external goods to someone concerned with living well consists solely “in what (they)
make it possible for him, as a result of having them, to do.
The external good are valuable to happiness just insofar as they make it possible to actualize virtue: a
person may need money to act liberally and political influence to act justly, but surely money and
political influence are not themselves elements of the happy life, as are liberality and justice.
Being ill-equipped can impede a person´s activities in different ways, and being well-equipped can aid
her in ways that are not straightforwardly instrumental in nature.
Even social attitudes affect one´s opportunities for virtuous action since prejudice and social ostracism
can seriously limit one´s options and one´s ability to successfully influence others. Monist, thus
traditionally recognize a second sense in which the external goods aid activity: not only are they the tools
of virtue, but they provide the context that makes the expression of virtue possible.
But if friendships relate to happiness only insofar as we are able to exploit them as opportunities for new
virtuous, then the loss of a friend or loved one, say, to death, only affects one´s happiness insofar as the
death block certain prospects of actions.
Take one of Aristotle’s favorite subjects: Priam, who is old age met with tragedy of mythical proportion.
According to the traditional monist account, Priam´s happiness was impacted by the slaying and
brutalization of his son Hector only because of Priam was thereby robbed of the opportunity to express
his virtue as a father. Kraut (1989, 256) puts this unfortunate aspect of the monist reading bluntly and
remarkably without complaint: the loss of (loved one) is not in itself decrease in happiness.
Of it really cannot accommodate the direct and devastating impact of a child´s death on a parent´s
happiness, then the monism appears to be both an unattractive and implausible view.
4. INCLUSIVISM.
The complaint against monism is that it seriously undersells the value of somatic and external goods by
relegating them to a subsidiary role in aiding virtuous action. And that role seems inadequate in
explaining Aristotle´s apparent acceptance of endoxic opinion.
Aristotle with an implausible account of the external goods, the saddles Aristotle with an implausible
account of the external goods, the inclusivist interpretation attributes to him a more commonsense view
So why not call happy the person active in accordance with complete virtue and sufficiently equipped
with external goods, not for a chance time but for a complete life.
They join psychological goods as constituents of happiness, their deprivation can impact happiness
directly and not merely by cheating a person of some opportunity to express her virtue: the death of a
family member or the onset of illness can itself be an affront to happiness, independent of however it
impedes one´s prospects for virtuous activity, just because it´s painful. Unfortunately, those who defend
an inclusivist interpretation of Aristotelian happiness face a serious problem, and although the plausibility
of the inclusivist´ view cannot be settled here, the existence of this problem leaves the burden of proof
with them.
5. BLESSEDNESS AND HAPPINESS.
Aristotle can maintain that the happy life is the virtuous life and at the same time maintain that
deprivation and hardship can wreck our happiness directly and nonderivatively, just by causing pain,
sadness, suffering and dissatisfaction.
As inclusivist maintain, Aristotle here clearly does recognize that nonpsychological goods can affect our
lives in diverse ways

 Bringing beauty or pain.

 Aiding or obstructing our ability to act virtuously.
Happiness is the product of a person´s behavior, while blessedness is the product of the good fortune.
Discussion of friendship in book nine, Aristotle asks whether a happy person needs friends and the
immediately explains the motivation for his question, namely, people say the blessed do not need friends
because they are self-sufficient. (1169b4)
Aristotle seem to treat blessedness not as something distinct from happiness, but rather, as a more perfect
form of happiness.
Distinction between happiness and blessedness: he uses the term blessedness to pick out the happiest life
only when he wants to emphasize the fact that happiness comes in degrees and that among the happy
some are happier than others.
The blessed life transcends ordinary human happiness and come to resemble the life of a god.
They are not gods, and humans can at best approximate the divine, for human and divine lives are
fundamentally different. The gods are self-sufficient, and no human can lead and entirely self-sufficient
life. That is why Aristotle concludes in book nine that the blessed do need friendship.
Bearing in mind the relationship between the happy and the blessed life, we can return to the passage in
which Aristotle claims that there are two ways in which the external goods contribute blessedness,
namely, their deprivation

 Inflicts pain.
 Obstruct virtue.
6. CORRUPTING APTITUDES.
Sometimes deprivation may impact happiness by changing a person´s attitude towards behavior that
potentially express virtue. Sometimes deprivation damages a person in such a way that she can no longer
enjoy or take appropriate satisfaction in the tasks she sets for herself.
We can draw a connection between the claims that deprivation ruins happiness.
B) by thwarting virtuous behavior.
A) by causing pain: deprivation thwarts virtuous behavior by causing pain.
It might prevent me from developing a capacity for any real sense of satisfaction at all. Similarly, the loss
of a loved one to tragedy surely forecloses some avenues for excellence: it prevents me form
distinguishing myself as a friend to that person. But it also is the loss of someone about whom I care
deeply, and, as such, it affects the quality of my life in a in a way that is both more intimate and,
potentially, more global.
A person needs no extraordinary fortune, for “one shouldn´t think that the happy person will need many
grand things even if he cannot be blessed without external goods” (EN 1179a1)
7. THE UGLY, AND THE LONEL, AND THE LOWLY.
For it´s not possible, or it´s not easy, to do fine things unequipped.
Alone and childless won´t be entirely happy.
Happiness seems to require this sort of prosperity as well. And that´s why some people identify happiness
with good fortune.
Aristotle thinks pain can spoil happiness by corrupting a person´s attitudes toward virtuous behavior.
John Cooper said if I am abhorrently ugly, I will never have the opportunity to be tempted into sexual
promiscuity because nobody will want to sleep with me; thus I will never have the opportunity to develop
the virtue of temperance.
A catastrophic loss, he wrote there, may deprive me of the tools I need to act virtuously, but such loss also
brings with it pain, and that pain may directly impact happiness, just as we ordinarily would expect.
With friends, I can express my kindness, my warmth, my fidelity in ways I never could were I solitary.
With wealth and political prestige, I can influence my community, improve social conditions, publicly
encourage the right kinds of values in ways I couldn´t if I occupied a more marginal social space. It is
precisely this sort of instrumental value that Aristotle means to capture.
The person who is truly good and wise and who bears all the chances of life gracefully, we remember
from before, may be eaudaimon though not makarion (EN1101a1). So, sometimes bad luck in our
personal affairs impacts us only mildly: pain stings and, thus, disturbs our blessedness, but it hardly
thereby obstructs our happiness.
Yet Aristotle also affirms that happiness sometimes is vulnerable to the hardships of deprivation and bad
luck especially when those hardships compound, confronting us not as life´s ordinary hurdles but as
extraordinary obstacles. Thus, as he writes, nobody will be entirely happy if he is exceedingly ugly to
look at (not just mildly unattractive but panaiskes) or basely born (not just born into an undistinguished
family) or both solitary and childless (not just unpopular or a little lonely).
Social circumstances and tragedy can prevent us from leading minimally happy lives. And while Aristotle
does not explicitly tell us why such considerations strip us of happiness, he hardly needs to: for Aristotle,
the fact that a person wracked by poverty or suffering from a deformity or mourning the death of a family
member does not possess the minimum level of external resources required for happiness goes without
saying.
Different strategies have emerged for squaring Aristotle´s recognition of that significance with his
definition of happiness, and I have argued that, contrary to appearances, the monist strategy allows
Aristotle both to maintain his identification of happiness with virtue and to tell a plausible story about
how deprivation of external goods impacts happiness.
Like the capable military general who makes the best strategic use of his army, so too we should make the
best use of the cards fate has dealt.
We predict a person´s chances for leading a happy and good life without considering the resources at her
disposal, the obstacles that stand in her way, the tricks of fate that sometimes remove those obstacles.