Human Flourishing — Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
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August 2 - Now that we have read chapters 1–5 on what pleasure is, we are going to read chapter 6 (1176a30–1177a11) on what human flourishing is. In previous chapters Aristotle has debunked the views that (1) pleasure is the supreme good, that (2) pleasure is bad, and that (3) all pleasures are choiceworthy. Then he argues that (4) pleasure is an emergent activity in living life, and that (5) human pleasure originates in beautiful activities as selected by someone who can see what is humanly good.
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We are live-reading and discussing Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, book X, which is about pleasure and human flourishing.
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The prerequisite to this book is our answering for ourselves these questions from the prior books, to which we will briefly review:
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1. What is the full-time job of being a human being?
2. What is the systematic structure of the human potential?
3. What is a virtue of character {ēthikē aretē}?
4. How does one come to acquire any of it? (E.g. pride, ambition, bravery, gentlemanliness, generosity, candor, fairness, friendliness, …)
5. How does one formulate right desires?
6. How is one to recover from being bad to becoming a good person?
7. What is entailed in and what is required of being a friend?
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The project's cloud drive is here, at which you'll find the reading texts, notes, and slideshows.