Is the good life a life of virtuous activity, as Aristotle's account of eudaimonia claims?
Aristotle's eudaimonist conception of the good life: function, virtue, the mean and external goods
A VCE Philosophy Unit 4 answer on Aristotle's conception of the good life. Explains eudaimonia, the function argument, virtue as a mean, the role of external goods and practical wisdom, and evaluates the theory against objections from luck and from rival hedonist views.
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What this dot point is asking
VCAA wants you to explain Aristotle's account of the good life as eudaimonia, reconstruct the function argument that grounds it, set out virtue as a mean and the role of practical wisdom and external goods, and then evaluate whether this is a convincing account of the good life. The high-band answer treats eudaimonia precisely (not mere feeling-good), reconstructs the function argument as steps, and weighs Aristotle against the objection from luck and against hedonist rivals.
Eudaimonia as the final end
Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, begins from the observation that every action aims at some good. If there is a final end we pursue only for its own sake, that is the highest good. He argues this end is eudaimonia: living well and doing well. Eudaimonia is not a passing feeling of pleasure but a way of living a whole life. It is final (pursued only for itself) and self-sufficient (lacking in nothing). Critically, eudaimonia is an activity, not a state: it is something you do, not something that merely happens to you.
The function argument
Aristotle fixes the content of eudaimonia through the function (ergon) argument:
- For any kind of thing with a characteristic function, its good lies in performing that function well (a good knife cuts well, a good flautist plays well).
- Human beings have a characteristic function, namely activity of the rational part of the soul, since reason is what is distinctive of us.
- The good for a human is therefore to perform this rational activity well.
- To perform an activity well is to perform it in accordance with its proper virtue or excellence.
- Therefore the human good is activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, over a complete life.
Virtue as a mean and practical wisdom
Virtue of character is a settled disposition (hexis) to feel emotions and act in the right way. Each virtue lies in a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency. Courage is the mean between rashness and cowardice; generosity between prodigality and meanness. The mean is relative to the person and situation, not a strict arithmetic midpoint.
What identifies the mean is phronesis, practical wisdom: the intellectual virtue of perceiving what the situation demands and acting accordingly. Virtue is acquired by habituation, by repeatedly acting well until it becomes second nature, so that the virtuous person takes pleasure in virtuous action. We become just by doing just acts.
External goods and luck
Aristotle is not an ascetic. He grants that eudaimonia also requires some external goods: health, sufficient wealth, friends, good birth and reasonable fortune. A person broken by catastrophe or utterly friendless cannot fully flourish, however virtuous. This makes eudaimonia partly hostage to circumstances outside our control.
Evaluation
The account has real strengths. It captures the intuition that a good life is more than a sequence of pleasant feelings: it involves developing and exercising our capacities, having good relationships, and acting well. By making eudaimonia an activity of a whole life, Aristotle explains why we do not call someone happy on the strength of one good afternoon. The doctrine of the mean offers a usable guide to moral education through habituation.
The objections are serious. First, the problem of luck: if external goods are required, then flourishing depends partly on fortune, which seems unfair and clashes with the intuition (pressed by the Stoics and later by Kant) that the truly good life should be within the agent's control. Aristotle can reply that the virtuous person bears misfortune nobly and that only extreme misfortune destroys eudaimonia, but the dependence remains. Second, the function argument is contested at premise 2: it is not obvious that humans have a single characteristic function, and deriving values (what we should do) from a fact about our nature (what is distinctive of us) risks a naturalistic fallacy. Third, the doctrine of the mean can seem vague: it tells us to feel the right amount but not, without phronesis already in place, how much that is, which threatens circularity.
Compared with hedonism and desire-satisfaction views, Aristotle's account better explains why a life of shallow pleasures strikes us as deficient and why character matters. Compared with Mill, Aristotle shares the thought that some activities are higher, but grounds this in human function rather than in qualified judges.
Judgement: Aristotle gives the most psychologically realistic account of the good life on offer, integrating virtue, activity and relationships, and it rightly resists reducing the good life to felt pleasure. Its weak points are the function argument's inference from nature to value and its admission that flourishing depends on luck, which a rival who prizes security will count against it. On balance the account is strong but not complete: it describes flourishing well while leaving its metaphysical foundation exposed.
Exam-style practice questions
Practice questions written in the style of VCAA exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.
2023 VCAA5 marksa. Aristotle argues that a virtuous life aims for the mean between the vices of excess and deficiency. How might Callicles respond to this idea and what reason might he give? b. Evaluate Aristotle's view that a virtuous life is characterised by seeking the mean between vices of excess and deficiency. Use an example of a virtue discussed by Aristotle (for example, courage) in your answer.Show worked answer →
Five marks across two parts (2 + 3).
Part a (2 marks). Callicles would reject the doctrine of the mean as a recipe for mediocrity that suits the weak many, not the strong. On his view the genuinely good life is one of maximal appetite and the power to satisfy it; "moderation" is a value invented by the weak to restrain their superiors. So where Aristotle praises the mean, Callicles praises excess: the superior person should let their desires grow as large as possible and have the courage and intelligence to fulfil them.
Part b (3 marks). Explain the view, then weigh it with an example. For courage, the mean lies between cowardice (deficiency of confidence, excess of fear) and rashness (excess of confidence); the courageous person feels fear appropriately and stands firm for a noble end. Strength of the view: it captures that virtue is sensitive to circumstance, since the mean is relative to the person and situation, not a fixed quantity. Objection: the mean is not a precise decision procedure (it tells us to feel the right amount "at the right time, towards the right people"), so it risks being unhelpfully vague, and some acts (for example, murder) admit no virtuous mean. Reach a justified verdict.
2022 VCAA2 marksWhy does Aristotle reject the idea that honour is the good for humans? Outline one of his reasons.Show worked answer →
Two marks for one correctly explained Aristotelian reason.
One reason: honour depends on those who confer it rather than on the person who has it, so it is too superficial and unstable to be the human good. Aristotle holds that the good we are seeking, eudaimonia, must be something final and self-sufficient that belongs securely to the person, whereas honour can be given and taken away by others and so lies largely outside the agent's control.
An acceptable alternative reason: people seek honour in order to be reassured that they are good, which shows that virtue (the thing honour tracks) is more final than honour itself, so honour cannot be the highest good. Full marks identify that honour is sought for the sake of something further, or that it depends on others, and is therefore not the self-sufficient final end.
2020 VCAA5 marksa. Outline Aristotle's argument to the conclusion that a life devoted to money-making is not the good life. b. How plausible is Aristotle's view, as outlined in part a., on the role of money-making in the good life?Show worked answer →
Five marks across two parts (2 + 3).
Part a (2 marks). Aristotle argues that the good (eudaimonia) must be sought for its own sake and be self-sufficient. Wealth fails this test: money is only ever pursued as a means to other things (it is "merely useful and for the sake of something else"), never as a final end. The money-maker's life is therefore "one undertaken under compulsion," so a life devoted to it cannot be the good life, since the highest good must be chosen for itself.
Part b (3 marks). Weigh the claim. In support: it is intuitively right that hoarding money for its own sake is empty, and that wealth matters only for what it enables, which fits Aristotle's instrumental analysis. Against: a critic may say sufficient external goods, including wealth, are genuine constituents (not mere means) of a flourishing life, since Aristotle himself concedes that eudaimonia needs external goods; and someone might find the activity of building a business genuinely fulfilling. Reach a justified verdict on how plausible the instrumental view of money is.