THE HIGHEST END AND GOOD IS ACHIEVED BY DOING ONE’S FUNCTION WELL

Happiness is the highest good and the end at which all our activities ultimately aim. All our activities aim at some end,
though most of these ends are means toward other ends. According to Aristotle, happiness is the only end or good that we desire
for its own sake, and it is for the sake of happiness that we desire all other ends or goods. Happiness, however, is not merely a
pleasurable feeling of contentment or satisfaction, but an activity of human beings, and one that is understood in terms of the
function of human beings in particular (see Teleology). Only the rational principle is particular to human beings, and a human
life, in order to be happy, must be lived in accordance with reason. Such a life is one in which reason and emotion are properly
balanced and harmonized, and in which reason is the guiding principle. Since it is the function of all human beings to live a
certain sort of life--and this life is an activity or action of the soul (think mind and spirit, here) implying a rational principle--then
the function of good human beings is the excellent and noble performance of these activities or actions. Thus happiness, for
Aristotle, is an activity of the human soul in accordance with excellence and virtue, and it is manifested over an entire lifetime
(see Virtue). Happiness, as the ethical end, does not simply consist in moral virtue, however, but includes intellectual virtue as
well, and complete happiness is a contemplative as well as a practical activity. Yet, Aristotle does not exclude all of the common-
sense notions of happiness. Happiness is not a single thing, or a one-moment-in-time experience, but an activity of virtue (which
is necessarily accompanied by pleasure), an activity that cannot be exercised properly in the absence of certain external and
internal goods (friends, money, health, luck, etc.), and an activity that includes all of the various and incommensurable goods that
allow individuals to both flourish and be self-sufficient.