Developing Your Virtues

In the last post, I mentioned Aristotle's claim that happiness is the only goal that we seek as an end in itself. In this post, I will take that a step further and discuss Aristotle's view on how happiness is actually achieved.

Aristotle saw each person as possessing unique talents. These talents are your virtues. This comes from the fact that Aristotle used the term "arete" which is translated some times as excellence and some times as virtue. I prefer the word excellence rather than virtue because virtue has a connotation of moral goodness where as excellence is more suggestive of something that you are good at. The key to happiness, according to Aristotle is to develop your virtues or, in simpler terms, become better at things that you are good at.

This is almost common sense if you think about it. People who are good at music enjoy playing music. People who are good at sports enjoy playing sports. People who are good at academics enjoy studying and learning. Similarly, people who are not good at sports, for example, do not enjoy them.

This can also be understood from an evolutionary perspective. If a person is good at something and they develop that talent, then they are more likely to survive as long as that talent has some survival value. This mechanism was discussed earlier. If people are rewarded by pleasurable experience for pursuing things they are good at, they are more likely to pursue those things. If the pursuit of those things has evolutionary advantage, then the pleasurable reward also has evolutionary advantage.

So, over eons of evolution, the enjoyment of pursuing one's virtues has evolutionary value. The enjoyment also has evolutionary value. And hence we enjoy doing things we are good at and becoming better at things we are good at makes us happy.