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He seeks to establish that the good at which all of our actions are aimed is happiness. This strikes us modern readers as odd. Normally we speak about happiness and morality in starkly different terms. We praise someone for acting on moral principle even if they suffer personal hardship as a result. To Aristotle, however, happiness is not the same thing as enjoying a pleasant frame of mind. Otherwise, we would have to reach the conclusion that someone stays happy even while fast asleep. As he puts it:

      With those who identify happiness with virtue or some one virtue our account is in harmony; for to virtue belongs virtuous activity. But it makes perhaps no small difference whether we place the chief good in possession or in use, in state of mind or in activity. For the state of mind may exist without producing any good result, as in a man who is asleep or in some other way quite inactive, but the activity cannot; for one who has the activity will of necessity be acting, and acting well. And as in the Olympic Games it is not the most beautiful and the strongest that are crowned but those who compete (for it is some of these that are victorious), so those who act win, and rightly win, the noble and good things in life.⁵

      For Aristotle, the idea of eudaimonia, normally translated into English as “happiness” or “flourishing,” refers to activity that puts our capacities to correct use. Being in a state of happiness is tied to a way of living, that is, acting pursuant to our proper end as human beings. According to Aristotle, it is implicit in the logic of choice that whatever we are choosing to do, we are doing so to bring about an end.

      Ordinarily, the nearest objective we are considering turns out to be, when we think about it, advancing some other objective. And that further end itself turns out to be sought for the sake of yet some other thing. By continuing to scrutinize all of our objectives like this, eventually we reach an end that is not leading us beyond itself to anything else. That is going to be what we pursue for its own sake, which is to say, the good life. As Aristotle explains:

      If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this) and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life?⁶

      Because all human choice inevitably points this way, getting clear about what happiness entails constitutes the essence of ethical reflection. Indeed this focus on happiness is foundational for the structure of decent human associations.

      Happiness Is Social

      For Aristotle, happiness is not an exclusively individual affair; I can be happy only by living in a web of relationships with other people. In the eyes of Aristotle, humans are social and political creatures. People are inclined to live and to work collectively, and they do so not just from basic instinct, or because they need to, or because it's easier that way. Rather, nature disposes us to be social with an eye to our telos (end), which is coextensive with our perfection as human beings. Our flourishing entails living agreeably in a sociable community. There is reciprocity. You benefit your friends, family, and neighbors while they bring you benefits in return. Living in society completes us.

      The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole. But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state. A social instinct is implanted in all men by nature, and yet he who first founded the state was the greatest of benefactors. For man, when perfected, is the best of animals…. ⁷

      Thus, Aristotle maintains that it is not sufficient just to have the ability to reason. Nor is it sufficient to cultivate our reason. To be truly virtuous we also need to apply our reasoning ability toward the service of human communities. To grasp the significance of this for our look at virtue in business life, it is necessary to consider what Aristotle means by activities such as “philosophy” and “politics.”

      To Aristotle's mind, those activities that are most distinctly human are politics and philosophy. Because these endeavors involve maximum use of abstract thinking, they are of the highest order. But the realm of “philosophy” is quite broad, encompassing what we today consider to be the arts and sciences, together with all learned professions. Alongside this wide sense of philosophy, virtuous people are also active in the practical realm of politics. By “politics” Aristotle means not just elected officials, but something much more expansive that would certainly include people occupying positions of leadership in business enterprises.

      From an Aristotelian perspective, what is most significant is not some particular job description or career path. What matters instead is how you go about putting upper-level mental potentialities to use. Accordingly, the rank-and-file employee that is enlisted to solve company problems may be using the same high-order capacities as one of the firm's executive. Nevertheless, Aristotle endorses a hierarchy. At the apex are people with the highest inborn ability as well as those who cultivate their own abilities most completely. To be sure, this way of thinking seems totally out of sync with today's emphasis on equality. It is congruent, however, with how many economists analyze things and with the vertical structure that many business organizations are patterned upon. For this reason Aristotle's thought is particularly germane to contemporary concerns about what those at the top of organizations deserve or do not deserve.

      What we are seeing today is an odd juxtaposition of two things. On the one hand, there is the phenomenon of the “rock star” CEO. The cult of leadership personalities, such as Jack Welch and “J4M” who supposedly embody virtues for which extraordinary economic value is assigned, is reflected in the eye-popping ratios of monetary compensation when compared to the lowest-ranking members of a firm. On the other hand, there is the perception that if overvalued personalities are “bubbles” that have burst in the wake of a widespread crisis of moral authenticity maybe we ought to carefully scrutinize individual moral accountability at all levels of business organizations. In other words, we need to foster virtuous “leaders” not just at the top but in the middle and at the bottom of organizations as well. This entails rethinking business management. The virtuous leader is able to deliberate well and is curious, rational, introspective, and self-critical. Aristotle is dubious about whether one will long be successful in business matters absent such traits. Practical and virtuous individuals pose hard questions regarding what is good. Through habitual questioning of this sort, they arrive at an understanding of that which is right for not only for themselves, but also for their business and for their communities.

      Aristotle states that deliberative people will opt to restrain their wealth. However, this does not mean that he is delivering a condemnation of business entrepreneurship or calling on the wealthy to relinquish all of their possessions. The point is not that the creation of wealth is inherently evil, but rather that it is good to seek moderation.

      Considering commonly held views on happiness, Aristotle concludes they are reducible to a triad of pleasure, politics, and contemplation. “To judge from the lives that men lead, most men, and men of the most vulgar type, seem (not without some ground) to identify the good, or happiness, with pleasure; which is the reason why they love the life of enjoyment. For there are, we may say, three prominent types of life—that just mentioned, the political, and thirdly the contemplative life.”⁸ We shall consider each of these kinds of life in turn.

      The Life of Pleasure

      Gimme the loot, gimme the loot.

      —Notorious B.I.G.

      The way of pleasure is devoted to sensual satisfactions and to distractions of the mind that cause our most elevated intellectual abilities to lay fallow. Pursuing a pleasure-filled life means amassing creature comforts, enjoying culinary pleasures, inhabiting an enormous residence, and so on. The vast majority of people, observes Aristotle, cling to this ideal of happiness. Yet he rejects straightaway the hedonistic lifestyle sought by most people on the grounds that dwelling on sensual satisfaction places us on par with nonhuman creatures. “Now the mass of mankind are evidently quite slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts, but they get

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