Abstract

Although Aristotle's ethics is rightly characterized as eudaimonist, in making the happiness of an individual his preeminent aim, it does not adopt the harmonizing eudaimonist position that all constituents of human happiness are consistent with each other. For one thing, he holds that there can be conflicts between friends. In addition, he maintains that conflicts within happiness can break out, between the value of acting in a morally virtuous way and that of pursuing intellectual virtue or contemplation. Aristotle thus admits the possibility of conflict within virtue, and therefore within happiness, which is defined as activity in accordance with virtue. He accordingly does not use the notion of virtue, let alone an ethics of virtue, to construct a harmonizing view of happiness.