Preface: The Pursuit of Happiness

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics was the first philosophical book I ever read. I began reading it in April 1988, while living in Japan at the age of twenty-six, often carrying the book with me on the train, underlining passages and writing notes in the margins. The book left a lasting impression on me, and more than two decades later it became the focus of my graduate thesis. This book is an expanded and updated version of that thesis, rewritten in contemporary language for the general reader while remaining faithful to Aristotle’s view that excellence of character and activity in accordance with reason are central to human happiness.

The title, The Pursuit of Happiness, and subtitle, The Art of Living Well, reflect the central question that has guided my study of Aristotle for many years: What does it mean to live well as a human being? Aristotle believed that happiness is not merely a feeling or a temporary experience of pleasure but an enduring way of living that fulfills our distinctive human capacities over the course of a complete life. He defines happiness as complete and self-sufficient—that is, complete in the sense that it is the highest human good, and self-sufficient in the sense that it contains everything necessary for human flourishing.

The Pursuit of Happiness captures the universal desire to seek a meaningful and worthwhile life. The Art of Living Well emphasizes that human flourishing is achieved through the cultivation of one’s capacities and the pursuit of a fulfilling life. In this book, I use flourishing to refer to happiness in the Aristotelian sense. Following Aristotle, human flourishing (eudaimonia) is happiness understood as living well and fulfilling one’s nature. It describes what happiness consists in: the fulfillment of human life through excellent activity in accordance with reason. Like any art, living well requires learning, practice, sound judgment, and the cultivation of excellence in both thought and action. It is an ongoing process of realizing our potential and pursuing worthwhile goals.

Throughout this book, I use Aristotle’s insights as a guide for understanding how happiness can be achieved through purposeful activity, meaningful relationships, continuous learning, and thoughtful reflection. Ultimately, the art of living well is the art of fulfilling our human function and attaining human flourishing.

Throughout much of the Ethics, Aristotle argues that happiness consists in activity in accordance with ethical excellence. Yet near the end of the work, he appears to identify contemplation as the highest and most complete expression of human life. He also suggests that happiness depends, at least in part, on external goods such as friendship, health, and other resources necessary for living well.

What, then, are the external goods and qualities of character required for a human being to flourish? To what extent are goods such as wealth, friendship, and material resources necessary for happiness? And what excellences of character—such as courage, self-control, generosity, proper pride, and justice—must a person cultivate to attain the complete and self-sufficient happiness that Aristotle calls human flourishing?

These questions have led scholars to develop different interpretations of Aristotle’s account of happiness. One interpretation, often called “intellectualism,” holds that contemplative activity is the highest and most complete expression of happiness, while ethical activity plays a secondary role. Another interpretation, known as “inclusivism,” maintains that happiness consists in a range of intrinsic goods and activities, including ethical activity, friendship, pleasure, honor, health, and contemplation.

This book presents a unified account of happiness in which ethical and contemplative activities are not competing ideals but instead complement and support one another within a hierarchical order of activities in a complete human life. Human beings flourish through both practical engagement in the world and contemplative understanding of it, integrated within a life shaped by sound judgment and cultivated excellence.

Aristotle’s account of happiness therefore includes both ethical and intellectual excellences, with contemplation understood not as withdrawal from life but as a deeper form of engagement with it. Since these excellences are cultivated within communities and through lived experience, both forms of activity are essential to achieving human flourishing. Together, they provide a comprehensive account of happiness and what it means to practice the art of living well.