On "Happiness and the Good Life"

Author(s): ALFRED R. MELE

Source: The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy , SUMMER, 1979, Vol. 10, No. 2
(SUMMER, 1979), pp. 181-187
Published by: University of Arkansas Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43155350

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 On "Happiness and the Good Life"
ALFRED R. MELE
University of Michigan

Thomas L. Carson, in his essay "Happiness and the Good Life,"1 argu
that

Aristotle to the contrary, happiness is just one good thing among

many others. It is not some sort of "inclusive good" which involves,
or may involve, the possession of all the other "goods" which it is
possible for a person to have. [p. 74]

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 un- Aristotelian.
Though Carson's arguments should convince us that "contentment,"
or "being satisfied with one's life,"2 is not an "inclusive good," Aris-
totle'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 "in-
clusive 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 at-
tack 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.

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 I. Happiness as an Inclusive Good

We may characterize an inclusive good as a good, G, which is such that

if a person is possessed of G no other good of which he is possessed can
be conjoined with G in such a way as to yield a good which is greater
than G.3 Happiness (eudaimonia) , according to Aristotle, is such a
good: "We think it most desirable of all things, without being counted
as one good thing among others" (NE i. 7. 1097^6-17). If it were so
counted, then a person's happiness plus some other good of which he is
possessed would be a greater good than his happiness alone ( 17-20) ;4
but this, in Aristotle's view, cannot be. Happiness is the chief or best
human good (NE 1. 7); no human good- even a conjunctive one- is
better for a human being than happiness.
In Book 1 of the Nicomachean Ethics , where happiness is said to be
"most desirable of all things, without being counted as one good thing
among others," Aristotle regards 'eudaimonia' as being a generally ac-
cepted name for "the highest of all goods achievable by action"
(1095316-17). That is, he takes the view that, whatever the highest
good is, it is generally (and rightly) agreed that ' eudaimonia 9 is a name
for it (and that, in discovering what the highest good is, one will dis-
cover what happiness is).5 Now Carson neither defends any particular
conception of happiness nor attacks the popular use of ' eudaimonia 9
adopted in Book 1. So in order to refute Aristotle's position that happi-
ness is an inclusive good, he has to show that there is no inclusive,
highest good (if there is a highest good, that good is eudaimonia , given
the usage adopted in NE 1; and if the highest good is an inclusive good,
then eudaimonia is an inclusive good, given this usage) . But that, as we
shall see, is something that he fails to do.6

II. Carson9 s Attack

Carson advances three arguments in support of his contention that

happiness is not an inclusive good. In this section I shall exhibit their
individual weaknesses as intended refutations of Aristotle, or parts
thereof.
The first argument occupies Section II of Carson's paper. The pri-
mary purpose of this portion of his essay, as I understand it, is to show
that a happy life is not necessarily a good life. Now Aristotle says not
only that "both the general run of men and people of superior refine-
ment say that [the highest of all goods achievable by action] is happi-
ness and identify living well and doing well with being happy" (1. 4.
i095ai6-20) but also that he has "practically defined happiness as a

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sort of good life and good action" (1. 7. i098b2i-22, cf. 23). So al-
though there may be some notion of happiness on which it is possible
that a happy life not be a good life, Aristotle's notion of happiness
plainly does not allow for this possibility. As Aristotle understands the
term 'eudaimon1 , it is analytic that a eudaimon life is a good life. This
is why all people can agree that happiness is the highest good, and that
to be happy is to live well and do well, without agreeing about what
happiness (and "being happy") is aside from this (i.e., without agree-
ing upon a determinate account of the constitution of happiness (see
1095320-26) ).
What Carson demonstrates in Part II of his paper is that a life of
pleasure or contentment is not necessarily a good life (in one sense of
'good') . (For a wicked person may find great pleasure and contentment
in a wicked life.) But by ' eudaimonia ' Aristotle means neither pleasure
nor contentment. Therefore, Carson's argument does not establish
that the eudaimon life, in Aristotle's sense of 'eudaimon' , is not an
inclusive good. (Carson also argues in this part of his essay that "a per-
son's happiness . . . [is] not necessarily proportional to the value of his
life." This point is addressed shortly, in connection with his third
argument.)
Carson's second argument concerns Aristotle's position that virtuous
activity is a major constituent of eudaimonia. It runs as follows: "A
person's level of welfare is largely, and perhaps mostly, a function of the
extent to which he succeeds in 'satisfying' his 'self-regarding' desires."
Now consider the case of the person who desires only pleasure and hap-
piness "for themselves"--"i.e., pleasure and happiness are the only ob-
jects of [his] self-regarding desires which are desired for their own sake."
This person's "level of personal welfare is mostly a function of the
extent to which he succeeds in satisfying his desire to be happy." And,
for him, "moral virtue is not its own reward": he "does not have any
kind of independent desire to be morally virtuous."7 So it is conceivable
that his being morally virtuous does not make a significant contribution
to his personal welfare. Therefore, given the connection between his
personal welfare and his happiness, it is conceivable that his being
morally virtuous does not make any significant contribution to his
happiness.
Aristotle's reply would surely be that Carson has misunderstood what
it is to be morally virtuous. On Aristotle's view the (active) morally
virtuous agent necessarily has "independent desires" for morally vir-
tuous activity; for part of what it is ti be, e.g., just or temperate, on the
position developed in the NE, is to be disposed to desire just or tem-
perate actions as ends 8 - i.e., for the sake of the activities themselves.

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In order for Carson's second argument to go through, then, he must
attack Aristotle's (dispositional) conception of moral virtue. But this
he does not do.
Carson's third argument (pp. 85-86) involves a consideration of the
following three cases:

A. S is a moderately unhappy person. He has done a fairly good job

of developing his "higher" potentials. He is, however, dissatisfied
with his life as a whole, and he has an unfavorable "balance" of
pleasure relative to pain (he is your "average" unhappy person).

B. Y spends his entire life in a "crude" pleasure machine. He con-

tinually undergoes pleasant experiences, and he is unable to think
or act.

C. Z is kept in prison all of his life. He is fed "soma" and other nar-
cotics which afford him pleasant experiences and keep him perfectly
content.

Carson asserts that

Y and Z are not unhappy- at the very least, being an unhappy per-
son entails feeling bad or having unpleasant experiences at some time
or other. There is no category mistake involved in concluding that
they are both happier ( less unhappy ) than S.

And he claims that if, as "seems more plausible," S has a better life than
Y or Z "it follows that a person's happiness or unhappiness is not neces-
sarily proportional to the value of his life." This, he says,

is not enough to refute the view that happiness is an "inclusive good"

in the way that Aristotle conceived. However, I believe that it de-
stroys any motivation there may be for accepting Aristotle's view. For
we cannot say that the goal of life is to be as happy as it is possible
to be. Living the best sort of life that it is possible for one to live need
not involve being as happy as it is possible for one to be.

The most obvious problem with this argument is that the notion of
happiness which it involves is strikingly un- Aristotelian. Although it is
plausible to say that Y and Z are happier than S, if by 'happier' one
means "more content" or "more satisfied with one's life," there are
other conceptions of happiness in which this is not the case. As Aristotle
conceives of happiness, it is an activity (a sort of "living well" and
"doing well"), not a state. But Y is not active; hence the term 'happy'
is no more applicable to him than it is to a table or chair. Similarly, Z's
alleged greater degree of happiness than that of S has nothing at all to

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do with activities of Z; so the notion of happiness in question is not
Aristotle's, nor anything remotely resembling it.
A second problem is that an argument of this sort from alleged de-
grees of happiness is not to the point. First, it is not clear whether a
person who "has a better life" may be less happy, in Aristotle's sense,
than a person who has a worse life, nor even how a method of compar-
ing degrees of eudaimonia is to work. If 'eudaimonia' is a name for the
highest good (whatever the latter may consist in), then we may want
to define "comparative eudaimonia " in terms of "relative degree of
achievement of the highest good" - we may want to say, e.g., that 'X is
more eudaimon that Y' means *X has achieved the highest good to a
greater degree than Y has/ But such a practice yields a strict correlation,
which Carson wants to deny, between the happiness of a life and its
goodness. So let us suppose that degrees of eudaimonia can be gauged
without making reference to goodness. Let us suppose, for example, that
if we paid careful attention to some of the major features of eudaimonia ,
as Aristotle conceives of it, we would find that a satisfied wicked person
is properly said to be more eudaimon than some person who "has a
better life." If this can be done, then "comparative happiness" need not
be an inclusive good, since we can imagine introducing some "goods"
into the wicked person's life (e.g., goods similar to those found in the
better life of a less happy person ) which in no way contribute to his
happiness. However, it would not, of course, follow from this that
happiness is not an inclusive good; for it is supposed not that our
wicked agent is a happy person- we have seen that, given Aristotle's
definition of 'eudaimonia' , he cannot be- but only that he is happier
than someone else (this is why Carson says that, rather than refuting
Aristotle's view, his argument destroys any motivation which there may
be for it) . More important, the supposition in question has no destruc-
tive force at all. The "greater happiness" of the wicked agent supposedly
consists mainly in his having more pleasure and contentment than some
person who "has a better life." But Aristotle does not hold that the
better (less evil) one (or one's life) is the more pleasure and content-
ment one will find in one's life. Although he does say that happiness is
the "best, noblest, and most pleasant thing in the world" (NE i.
1099324-25), neither this nor his view that happiness is an inclusive
highest good in any way suggests that with each step along the road to
the highest good (happiness) our lives must become increasingly more
pleasant (or less unpleasant) and involve greater degrees of content-
ment (or lesser degrees of discontentment) . That there is not, or might
not be, this correlation has little bearing upon Aristotle's position on
eudaimonia .

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 III. Some Closing Remarks

Carson's arguments do not undercut Aristotle's position that happiness

is an inclusive good. What they do suggest is that contentment, or
"being satisfied with one's life/' is not an inclusive good. But although
contentment, on Aristotle's view, certainly has a place in the happy life,
his concept of eudaimonia is a much grander concept than that of
contentment.

Now I have not here argued that Aristotle is correct in maintaining

the view that happiness is an inclusive good. Part of my reason for not
doing this is that the view is not entirely évaluable unless it comes com-
plete with a fairly substantial account of the nature and constitution
of happiness; and while no such account is offered in Book 1, it seems
doubtful that the more determinate conception of happiness in NE io
is a conception of something which might be an inclusive good. In
Book 10, happiness is identified with contemplation: "Happiness . . .
must be some form of contemplation" (ii78b32). But if, as seems
likely, the "contemplative person" may be possessed of "goods" which
do not contribute to his contemplative activities but which, when
"mixed" with contemplation, result in a greater good, then contempla-
tion is not an inclusive good. A mixture of activities in accordance with
the various human excellences is, I think, a more promising candidate
for the position of "the inclusive, highest good." And if to be happy
( eudaimon ) is to live a mixed life of this type, then perhaps happiness
is an inclusive good. But, of course, a proper investigation of this issue
would necessarily involve a good bit of analysis of happiness and this
notion of a mixed life.

NOTES

i . Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 9, no. 3 ( 1978) .

2. For this phrase and a related use of 'contentment/ see ibid., p. 74.
3. An alternative characterization of an inclusive good is: A good, G, such tha
no other good can be combined with G so as to yield a greater good than G. O
this characterization a particular person's happiness would not be an inclusive good
at least if it is assumed that one person's happiness "plus" the happiness of anothe
is a greater good than either person's happiness alone (cf. NE 1. 109^7-10
Aristotle, however, does want to hold that a particular person's happiness is a
inclusive good; hence the person-relative characterization offered in the body o
this essay. (Notice that, on this person-relative characterization, there is a sense i
which anyone who is possessed of a good or goods is possessed of an inclusive good
In the case of each such person the collection of all his goods is an inclusive good (
our sense ) . This is not to say, of course, that the person who is possessed of any good
at all has achieved eudaimonia. )

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 4- In the passage cited, Aristotle says that if happiness were counted as one good
thing among others "it would clearly be made more desirable by the addition of
even the least of goods; for that which is added becomes an excess of goods, and of
goods the greater is always more desirable." This assertion should be compared with
NE io. 1172031-3$:
[Plato] argues that the pleasant life is more desirable with wisdom than without,
and that if the mixture is better, pleasure is not the good; for the good cannot be
made more desirable by the addition of any of the things that are good in them-
selves. What, then, is there that satisfies this criterion, which at the same time we
can participate in? It is something of this sort that we are looking for.

The argument here is not this: "Pleasure can be made better, or more desirable, by
the addition of 'intrinsic' goods; therefore, pleasure is not the good." (Pleasure has
its own intrinsic worth, which worth is not increased by "mixing" pleasure with
other intrinsic goods.) Rather, what is argued is that, since a pleasant life may be
made a better or more desirable life by the addition of some other intrinsic good,
pleasure is not the good. Similarly, the claim in our passage from book i is that a
happy life plus some intrinsic good is not better than a happy life, since any in-
trinsic good of which a happy person is possessed is included in (contributes to)
his happiness. (Cf. also MagnaMoralia 1184315-25.)
5. See 1. 4. 1095314-22, reproduced in part below. Compare NE 1. 7 and the
remark there that "presumably ... to say that happiness is the chief good seems a
platitude, and a clearer account of what it is is still desired" (iogyb22-24) .
6. One might try instead to show that happiness, as the notion is fleshed out
later in the NE (particularly in book 10), is not an inclusive good. This point is
commented upon in Section III infra. Carson does not attempt such a
demonstration.
7. The emphasis is mine. The supposition here is that any desire of the person in
question to be morally virtuous is derivative from a desire for happiness or pleasure.
He desires to be morally virtuous only because he believes virtue to be a means to an
end.
8. The moral virtues, as Aristotle conceives of them, are, among other things,
dispositions to wish to act virtuously; e.g., the virtue "justice" is (among other
things) a disposition to wish to act justly (NE 5. 112936-9). Wish (boulesis) is
strictly 3n end-directed desire (NE 3. 3, e.g.). So the just sgent is disposed to de-
sire, 3nd desires, just activities as ends ; and insofar as they are desired as ends, or for
their own sakes, they are, in Carson's phrase, their own reward. Cf. NE 1099313-21 :

. . . the lovers of what is noble find pleassnt the things that 3re by n3ture
ple3S3nt; snd virtuous sctions 3re such, so thst these are pleasant for such men as
well as in their own nature. Their life, therefore, has no further need of ple3sure
3S 3 sort of sdventitious chsrm, but hss plessure in itself. For, besides whst we
hsve said, the man who does not rejoice in noble actions is not even good; since
no one would call 3 man just who did not enjoy scting justly, nor 3ny m3n
libersl who did not enjoy liberal sctions; 3nd simikrly in all other cases. If this is
so, virtuous sctions must be in themselves plesssnt.

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