Broadie, Sarah

Luck and moral/non-moral goods in Aristotle - 2021.


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The topic of the study is luck in relation to happiness according to Aristotle. This problem is approached from the viewpoint of whether wisdom and virtue are sufficient for happiness. If this were the case, a poor and sick person would be happy. For Aristotle, on the contrary, happiness requires non-moral goods to be complete. Happiness is not only what makes the other things good; it is also something complete and desirable. In this case, the question of the relation of happiness to luck arises: does happiness depend on luck? This problem is itself examined in the particular case of a non-moral good: the end of life. Does Aristotle agree with Solon’s dictum: “Do not say ‘happy’ of the living, but only once the end is reached”? Can someone’s life be said to be happy even if its end is unknown? Or can it be said to be happy now, when one knows that it will end miserably? The author gives a detailed reading of the two treatments Aristotle gives to this question in EE II 1 and NE I 10-11. She shows that, according to Nicomachean Ethics, it is possible to say that someone is happy even if the end of their life is unknown. Happiness does not depend on chance insofar as happiness depends entirely on virtuous activity that, in turn, depends only on the agent. The article ends with a shorter consideration of the so-called “constitutive luck” in NE III 7 and X 10.