Illustration by Anne Geßner
As always, in August it was very warm. The only place where you could tolerate the heat, was at the seaside. There, between the dunes I felt the breeze touching my skin gently while I could hear voices of children playing on the beach. For days, I kept my mind busy asking myself what makes life a good one. But I wasn't able to find a satisfactory answer, so I dediced to enjoy the rest of the day doing nothing but having a refreshment at the seafront. Suddently, something caught my attention when I saw the children building sand castles. The way they were playing, made me understand in the blink of an eye, what at first true happiness means. I could see how absorbed they were, ignoring time and surroundings. Thoughts about school didn't come up at that time. Only the sand castles mattered to them.
Aristotle suggests that happiness at first can mean different things. To sick people, happiness means health, for poor people, wealth, for a father whose dauther ist about to get married, happiness means a rich bridegromm and for a young boy, to become famous. However, Aristotle believes that all these ideas of happiness aren't complete, because all these notions of happiness have the purpose not within but outside themselves. Moreover, people have these kind of desires, not only because of their desires themselves but because they want to achieve something through them. So sick people stay on a diet to get well soon, the father wants a rich bridegroom to extend his possesions and the kid, a superstar because he wants to be loved.
In the case of the sand castles we see an action, in which its purpose is within. However we also need an element of intellect. As per Aristotle a life in accordance to the spirit is necessary if we truly pursue life-long happiness. Why is that?
While building sand castles, children are in a state of pleasure. We could agree that they don't have any other ideas but playing. However their actions don't content any trace of intelellect. As soon as they stop playing, they could do wrong. That contradicts the idea of Good according to Aristotle, then blissfully happy is the one who always acts according to principles of reason. Here we can see the influence of Plato's work on Aristotle's idea of Good. As Plato maintains, we always do wrong as a consecuence of ignorance. So, in order to do long-lasting good, we need to observe our actions in the light of reason. Only if we act according to out greater Good, we will have truly life-long happiness.