First I will examine how Aristotle came to the conclusion that happiness is what human actions should ultimately strive for. Aristotle first starts off by explaining why every human action strives towards a certain good or perfection. The morally good action is the moderate action between excess and deficiency. For instance, liberality would be the best action between prodigality and thriftiness. Also, the intellectually best action would be perfection of a certain skill. For example, an architect would want to master house building. He then makes it clear that human action, if it to be of any use, has to have an ultimate goal where everything else is performed for the sake of it. Human life has to have a final aim or man is just a victim of endless desires that never reach completion. Aristotle sums this up with an analogy, "Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right?" Then He concludes the first section of book 1 by saying that politics has to be the art of this final goal, because politics will se

ek it for all, not just an individual.

Aristotle then explains why obtaining wealth is not a form of happiness. Wealth is a mean for something else, a rich person who works hard to accumulate wealth is not in search of just money, but does it to eventually obtain happiness.

Individuals seek to live life in three different ways: seeking pleasure, a life filled with politics, or the contemplative life. For Aristotle the contemplative lifestyle is the best way to live. To contemplate is to reflect on one's actions, and only in reflection and habituation can a person make themselves better. Aristotle explains that many in politics associate happiness with honor, but honor is something that an individual can only attain if others praise him. Happiness cannot be something that is merely praised by others because then, it can be easily taken away and is subject to opinion. Happiness is in the realm of things that are prized not praised. A happy man is not one of extravagant pleasures or honor before everything else. A happy man is one who is striving for a prize, a man in search of the good life. In addition, Virtue cannot be all that people within the realm of politics seek, because "possession of virtue seems actually compatible with being asleep, or with lifelong activity" By this Aristotle means intellectual virtue, where a man has a great deal of knowledge, but may or may not attain happiness. Aristotle is careful to separate intellectual virtue from moral virtue, and place the latter on a higher pedestal. Intellectual virtue is that which is learned or experienced through schooling or craft. Whereas, moral virtue is one accomplished through habituation. A morally virtuous man finds pleasure in doing good acts, and actually does them. Intellectual virtue can only allow a man to think about doing good actions or analyze the world, it does not entail him actually committing to a moral path of action. A man always in pursuit of honor would try to achieve honor at all costs in attempts to be praised, which would only lead to misery and further disappointment. The man-seeking honor is not seeking his own happiness, but rather for other people to view him as an honorable leader. This view is not only superficial, but it places the person who is seeking it in the hands of those they are trying to impress, making it very unstable and doomed to fail.

Aristotle defines luck in terms of a lucky person. A lucky person is one that commits a virtuous act or brings about a good without making use of their intelligence. However this is not the only kind of luck people have; "for while we call people lucky who get what they were aiming at when their reasoning was at fault, we also call people lucky who succeeded in getting a good which they were not actually aiming at." (375 Annas). Therefore, virtue can sometimes be achieved through luck, but Aristotle says this kind of virtue is only a natural virtue. People who have this sort of virtue fall short of being fully virtuous though because they did not have to work for it. On the other side of the issue, Aristotle did not think that a person could blame their non-virtuous actions as being caused by bad luck. He though that if you have temperate impulses or pleasure driven forces acting inside your brain then you only have yourself to blame. The easy solution to your problem would be to commit the virtuous act, to rid yourself of the vice. This issue seems unfair to the people who seem to have run in

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Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)