Irwin (1999) Permanent Happiness: Aristotle and Solon

 T. H. Irwin. Permanent Happiness: Aristotle and Solon. in:  in Nancy Sherman ed. Aristotle’s Ethics: Critical Essays. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. 1999

In his initial claim about happiness he attends closely to common beliefs. When he has defined happiness as an activity of the soul expressing complete virtue in a complete life, he introduces the common view that happiness is rather unstable because it is vulnerable to it fortune, to external hazards that the agent cannot control. Aristotle remarks that if someone is well off for most of his life, but finally suffers disastrous ill fortune and comes to a bad end, no one counts him happy; this is what happened to Priam at the end of his life (1100a4-9). [1]

But if he admits that happiness is vulnerable to external hazards, he cannot claim that virtue ensures happiness. How, then, can he advise us to be virtuous if we want to be happy? [2]

It is rather surprising to us, then, that Greek moralists advocate the pursuit of virtue by appealing to the agent's happiness, when it seems obvious that his virtue does not always promote his happiness. The problem about ill fortune is simply one expression of this general difficulty about virtue and happiness.

Aristotle sees the difficulty. He wants to solve it by examining them to see what they imply, and how far they really conflict with a reasonable view of happіness. After the remark about Priam he adds: "Then should we not count any one else either as happy, as long as he is alive? Should we follow Solon's advice and see the end?" (1100a11-12). I agree with Aristotle's view that Solon's advice deserves discussion, and that it illuminates the problem about happiness and fortune. Before considering Aristotle's views we will find it useful to explore Solon's advice further. [2]

2. Solon's Problem

we know they were permanently well off because they are dead, and so no longer liable to reversals of fortune. Croesus, however, is alive, and we cannot know that he is permanently happy, because we do not know that he will be spared reversals of fortune. [3]

When Solon advises us to see the end of a person's life before deciding about the person's happiness, we see how he conceives happiness. He refuses to consider the apparently natural possibility that Croesus might be happy at one time and unhappy at another time in his life. He must, then, regard happiness as a condition of a person's life as a whole. It is reasonable for him to do this, if he conceives happiness as success. For the success that a person reasonably wants and pursues is not success for a day or two, but his success over his whole lifetime. And that is the sort of thing that, as Solon reasonably observes, you can discover only when you contemplate a person's complete lifetime after it is over.

Aristotle describes happiness as "doing well combined with virtue" or "self-sufficiency of life" or "the pleasantest life with safety" or "prosperity of possessions and bodies with the power to protect them and use them in action" (1360b14-17). Power and fortune are also parts of happiness because these are the best providers of safety (1360b28-9).

Not surprisingly, it becomes a Greek commonplace that no one should be called happy until his death.

Solon's view of happiness seems to support the adaptable person's strategy. Such a person foresees all that can be foreseen, and when something unforeseen happens he improvises suitably. But some Greeks hesitate to advocate this sort of outlook, and find themselves admiring the inflexible person, even though his inflexibility seems to destroy his prospect for happiness. Why should inflexibility seem so admirable? The common conception of happiness offers no answer to this question, and common sense offers no ground for admiration apart from happiness. [4]

3. Aristotle's Agreement with Solon

Since happiness is the highest good, it must be complete (teleion) and selfsufficient (autarkes). A complete and self-sufficient good is one that all by itself makes life choiceworthy and lacking in nothing. If it really makes life lacking in nothing,a complete good must be comprehensive; nothing can be added to it to make а better good (1097b8-21). [4]

A comprehensive good must extend beyond conditions of the agent himself; Aristotle explains that it must include the happiness of family, friends, and fellow citizens (109768-13). [4-5]

If happiness is comprehensive, and goods dependent on fortune are genuine goods, then happiness must include them. If it did not, then their addition to happiness would produce a good better than happiness alone, which is impossible. Aristotle agrees that goods of fortune are genuine goods; hence he agrees that happiness requires them (1099a31-b8). He sharply rejects the Socratic and Cynic view that virtue alone is sufficient for happiness (1095b31-1096a2, 1153b14-25) [5]

 

This point needs no qualification when Aristotle defines happiness as activity of the soul expressing complete virtue. For both the acquisition and the actualization of complete virtue require goods of fortune. Some examples make the point obvious. We cannot be magnificent or magnanimous if we are not rich; and we cannot live with our friends if they die at the wrong times. The definition of happiness shows why it is subject to fortune. [5]

(a) In many actions we use friends, riches and political power as we use instruments; and (b) there are some things the lack of which mars blessedness.

Among the remaining goods (ie. the external goods), (b) there are some whose presence is necessary (for happiness), (a) others that are by nature co-operative and useful as instruments.

Great and numerous (strokes of fortune) that turn out well make his life more blessed; for (b) they themselves by nature adorn it, and (a) his use of them proves to be fine and excellent.

In each passage Aristotle distinguishes (a) the role of external goods as instruments of virtuous action from (b) their role as contributors to happiness apart from (a)...In one way all external goods are 'resources' (choregia; cf. 1099a32-3, 1178a26) that a virtuous person has to use properly; [5] a vicious person will misuse the goods he has to his own harm (1129b1-4). [6]

the instrumental goods that secure these sensual pleasures are not good because they help him to be temperate, but because they secure these pleasures. For similar reasons the magnanimous person values honour, and thinks he deserves it as the appropriate prize for virtue (1123b15- 24, 34-6); it is an appropriate prize not because he needs it to act virtuously but because it is the greatest external good in its own right. [6]

Honour is simply the most important of the noninstrumental external goods needed to make avirtuous person's life complete. Aristotle suggests that someone who is physically repulsive (not merely undistinguished) or of low birth, or solitary or childless is a poor candidate for happiness; and remarks that it is even worse for someone who has bad children or friends, or has had good ones who have died (109962- 6). He does not suggest that the absence or loss of these goods is bad because it causes pain or frustration, or because it prevents virtuous action (though no doubt it may have both of these effects). These are goods that are valued for their own sake, and therefore belong to a complete life. [6]

No external good is a part of happiness if it is isolated from virtue; a healthy, strong, handsome, vicious person has no part of happiness at all, since he will simply misuse the external goods he has (1129b1-4). The external goods that in the Rhetoric count as parts of happiness are refused this status in the Ethics, because they are not parts of happіness in their own right; it is the virtuous person's correct use of one of these goods, not the good by itself, that is a part of his happiness. Still, the external goods are necessary for happiness, and some are neсessary because they are intrinsic (i.e., not purely instrumental) goods.

4. Aristotle's Disagreement with Solon

Aristotle defends a surprising degree of inflexibility, because he thinks Solon is quite wrong on one crucial point. [7]

Solon's conception implies that happiness depends on conditions outside the agent; and Aristotle criticizes such conceptions. He rejects the life of honour as a candidate for happiness, because honour depends on the attitudes of other people, whereas "we intuitively believe that the good is something of our own and hard to take from us" (1095b25).Our intuitive belief is partly satisfied if happiness is controlled by virtuous activities (1100b11-22), since these are our own, in our power and hard to take from us. The external goods are those that, in Job's view, "the Lord gives and the Lord takes away" (Job 1: 21). The Lord does not in the same way take away Job's integrity; it is up to Job himself to retain his integrity, and Aristotle argues that this is what controls happiness. [7]

솔론의 행복 개념은 행복이 행위자 외부의 조건들에 의존한다는 함의를 지닌다. 이에 대해 아리스토텔레스는 그러한 개념들을 비판한다. 그는 명예의 삶을 행복의 후보로서 거부하는데, 그 이유는 명예는 타인의 태도에 의존하기 때문이다. 반면, “선은 본래 우리 자신의 것이며, 쉽게 빼앗기지 않는 것이라고 우리는 직관적으로 믿는다”(1095b25)고 그는 말한다.

이러한 직관적 믿음은 행복이 덕 있는 활동에 의해 좌우된다면 어느 정도 충족된다(1100b11–22). 왜냐하면 덕 있는 활동은 우리 자신의 것이며, 우리의 통제 하에 있고, 쉽게 박탈당하지 않기 때문이다.

반면, 외적 재화는 욥기의 관점에 따르면 “주께서 주셨고, 주께서 거두신다”(욥기 1:21)고 말할 수 있는 것들이다. 하지만 욥의 성실함은 그러한 방식으로 주님이 거두어 가지지 않는다. 그것을 유지할 수 있는지는 욥 자신에게 달려 있다.

아리스토텔레스는 바로 이러한 내면의 도덕적 통제력, 곧 덕성과 성실함이야말로 행복을 진정으로 좌우하는 것이라고 주장한다.

And if it is activities that control life, as we said, no blessed person could ever become miserable; for he will never do what is hateful and despicable. (1100b23-35). [7]

Aristotle needs to explain how the addition and subtraction of goods can make someone more or less happy without making him cease to be happy, if happiness cannot have any goods added to make a better good. [8]

아리스토텔레스는 다음을 설명할 필요가 있다: 행복에는 어떤 선도 추가되어 더 나은 선을 만들 수 없다고 하면서도, 어떻게 선의 추가나 결핍이 한 사람을 더 행복하거나 덜 행복하게 만들 수 있는가? 그렇지 않으면 그의 주장은 모순에 빠진다. [8]

His claims are consistent if he explains completeness in the right way. The goods that are components of happiness are determinable types of goods; these are exemplified in determinate types of goods and in determinate tokens of these types. My playing golf now is a token of the type playing golf, which is a determinate type of the determinable type physical exercise and the determinable type recreation.[8]

그러나 만약 아리스토텔레스가 *“완전성(completeness)”*을 올바른 방식으로 설명한다면, 그의 주장은 양립 가능하다. 행복을 구성하는 선들은 *규정 가능한 종류의 선들(determinable types of goods)*이며, 이는 *특정한 종류(determinate types)*와 그것들의 *구체적 사례(tokens)*로 실현된다. 예컨대, 지금 내가 골프를 치고 있는 것은 *“골프 치기”라는 특정한 종류(determinate type)*의 하나의 *사례(token)*이며, 이는 다시 *“신체 운동(physical exercise)”*이나 *“오락(recreation)”*이라는 규정 가능한 종류에 속한다. [8]

Moreover, Aristotle's demand for completeness seems both unsatisfiable and unreasonable unless it requires an acceptable number of tokens, rather than all the tokens, of a determinate type of action. For however complete someone's life may seem to be, we will be able to imagine some token good activity that could have been added; but Aristotle will not want to concede that such a life is not complete and not happy. [9]

더 나아가, 아리스토텔레스의 완전성 요구는 만약 그것이 특정 행위 유형의 모든 사례들을 요구하는 것이라면, 충족 불가능하고 비합리적인 것이 된다. 왜냐하면 어떤 사람의 삶이 아무리 완전해 보이더라도, 우리는 언제나 “이런 선한 행위 하나쯤 더 있었으면 좋았을 텐데”라고 상상할 수 있기 때문이다. 하지만 아리스토텔레스는 그런 삶이 완전하지도 않고 행복하지도 않다고는 인정하고 싶어 하지 않을 것이다. 그렇기에 완전한 삶이란, 그 유형에 속하는 적절한 수의 행위 사례들을 포함한 삶이지, 가능한 모든 사례들을 포함한 삶은 아닐 것이다. [9]

I am happy, he can claim, if my virtue and external conditions allow me to fulfil my different capacities in the right order and proportion-if, for example, I am virtuous, and also rich enough to make magnificent actions prominent in my life. To be magnificent in contributing to the public good I need enough money for the appropriate large expenses. If I am left a large legacy, I will be pleased; for I will be able to do more of the magnificent actions that 1 enjoy and value. As Aristotle says, the use of these extra goods will be fine and excellent (1100b27). But though they make me happier, they do not produce a greater good than the happiness I previously had; for they do not add any further determinable good, but only add further tokens of some determinate types of a determinable good. [9]

내가 행복하다는 것은, 내 *덕(virtue)*과 외적 조건들이 내 다양한 능력들을 적절한 순서와 비율로 실현할 수 있게 해줄 때이다. 예를 들어, 내가 덕을 갖추고 있고, *위풍당당한 행위(magnificent actions)*를 삶에서 두드러지게 실현할 만큼 충분히 부유하다면, 나는 행복할 수 있다. 공공선을 위해 위풍당당한 기여를 하려면, 그러한 대규모 지출에 적합한 수준의 재산이 필요하다. 만약 내가 큰 유산을 상속받는다면, 나는 기쁠 것이다. 왜냐하면 내가 즐기고 중요하게 여기는 위풍당당한 행위들을 더 많이 할 수 있기 때문이다. 아리스토텔레스가 말하듯이, 이러한 추가 재화들을 활용하는 방식은 훌륭하고 고결하다(1100b27).

하지만 이 재화들이 나를 더 행복하게 만들더라도, 그것들이 내가 이전에 가지고 있던 행복보다 더 큰 선을 만들어내는 것은 아니다. 왜냐하면 그것들은 *새로운 규정 가능한 종류의 선(determinable good)*을 추가하는 것이 아니라, *이미 포함된 특정한 종류(determinate types)*의 선에 *추가적인 사례들(tokens)*을 더하는 데 그치기 때문이다.

The virtuous person, then, always has some part of happiness, and the non-virtuous person has no part of happiness, however many other goods he may have. The virtuous but unlucky person is not happy; the lucky but nonvirtuous person is unhappy. [9-10]

Since Aristotle believes this about virtue, he regards it as the dominant good, and the dominant component of happiness; it is ałways to be preferred over any other component or combination of components of happiness, and over any other good or combination of goods.

5. The Stable and the Unstable Components of Happiness

Aristotle suggests that happiness is more stable than Solon thought it was, because it is controlled by virtuous actions, and they are controlled by virtue, which is stable and not likely to be destroyed in our lifetime (1100b11-22). If virtue is stable, then happiness is stable to the extent that virtuous actions control happіness; and in so far as it is stable it is permanent. [10] 

이에 반해 아리스토텔레스는, 행복은 솔론이 생각한 것보다 훨씬 더 안정적이라고 주장한다. 그 이유는, 행복이 덕 있는 행위에 의해 통제되며, 이 행위들은 다시 *덕(virtue)*에 의해 통제되기 때문이다. 그리고 덕은 안정적이며, 우리의 삶 동안 쉽게 파괴되지 않는다 (1100b11–22). 따라서 덕이 안정적이라면, 행복은 덕 있는 행위가 그것을 통제하는 한도에서 안정적이며, 그렇게 안정적인 한도에서 *지속 가능하다(permanent)*는 것이 아리스토텔레스의 주장이다. [10]

Aristotle's position may appear to be inconsistent if we consider his claim that virtuous actions "control" (kuriai) happiness (1100b11-22); that someone is happy "because of" (dia) himself and not because of fortune (Pol. 1323b24-9; cf. 1099b20-1); and that happiness is "in" one's own character and actions (EE 1215a13-19; cf. 1100b8). These claims may seem to conflict with the admission that happiness depends on fortune. But Aristotle's use of the relevant causal concepts implies no conflict. In saying that virtuous actions control or cause happiness, he does not mean that they are sufficient for it, or that happiness consists only of them and their necessary consequences. He means that in the right circumstances virtuous actions make the decisive-contribution to happiness; we are to assume a reasonable level of external goods and then notice the role of virtue and virtuous action.

In the Eudemian Ethics and Magna Moralia this assumption about permanence seems to be accepted, and so Solon's advice is endorsed:

In choosing subordinate goods over virtue he shows that he misunderstands the nature of virtue and the nature of happiness. It is better to be inflexible about virtue; and to that extent we are right to prefer the inflexible to the adaptable character. [11]

And [there is supporting evidence for us in the claim] thataperson is not happy for [just] one day, or as a child, or for each period of his life. Hence Solon's advice is right, not to count anyone happy while he is alive, but only when his life reaches its end. For nothing incomplete is happy, since it is not a whole.2 (EE 1219b4-8)

“그리고 사람은 단 하루 동안만 행복하다거나, 아이일 때 행복하다거나, 인생의 각 시기마다 행복하다고 할 수는 없다. 그러므로 살아 있는 동안은 누구도 행복하다고 판단하지 말고, 그의 삶이 끝났을 때에만 행복하다고 판단하라는 솔론의 충고는 옳다. 왜냐하면 불완전한 것은 결코 행복할 수 없기 때문이며, 그것은 전체(whole)가 아니기 때문이다.”
— 『에우데모스 윤리학』 1219b4–8

On this view, Priam's misfortunes in old age imply that he never was happyу. Eventually, however, Aristotle shows that this is not his view. For he recognizes that a happy person can lose his happiness if he suffers the misfortunes of Priam (1101a6-11). If happiness requires acomplete life and a complete time, he must have had these before he suffered the misfortunes; hence a complete time cannot be a lifetime. Aristotle confirms this point when he remarks that someone who has lost his happiness can still regain it, "not... in a short time, but, if at all, in some long and complete time, in which he has succeeded in great and fine achievements" (1101a12-13). Though "if at all" suggests that the task of recovering happiness is not easy, it is plainly not self-contradictory, as it would be if a complete time were a whole lifetime [12]

이런 관점에서 보면, 프리아모스가 노년에 겪은 불운은 그가 사실 한 번도 행복했던 적이 없다는 것을 의미하게 된다. 하지만 결국 아리스토텔레스는 이것이 자신의 견해가 아님을 보여준다. 왜냐하면 그는 행복한 사람도 프리아모스처럼 큰 불운을 겪는다면 그 행복을 상실할 수 있다고 명확히 인정하기 때문이다 (1101a6–11). 만약 행복이 완전한 삶과 완전한 시간을 요구한다면, 그 사람은 불운을 겪기 이전에 이미 그것들을 갖고 있었어야 한다. 그러므로 여기서 말하는 “완전한 시간”은 반드시 평생 전체를 의미하는 것은 아니다. 아리스토텔레스는 이 점을 다음과 같은 말로 다시 확인한다: “행복을 상실한 사람이 다시 행복해질 수는 있다. 짧은 시간 안에는 아니지만, 만약 그렇다면, 그것은 어떤 길고 완전한 시간 안에서, 그가 위대하고 훌륭한 성취들을 이룬 경우일 것이다.” (1101a12–13) 비록 “만약 그렇다면(if at all)”이라는 표현은 행복의 회복이 쉽지 않다는 점을 시사하지만, 그 일이 불가능한 것이거나 모순적인 것은 아니다. 만약 완전한 시간이 한 사람의 평생 전체를 의미했다면, 죽기 전까지는 절대 행복을 회복할 수 없었을 것이기 때문에, 그러한 진술은 자기모순이 되었을 것이다.

In the Magna Moralia and Eudemian Ethics the popular demand for security and permanence is defended by appeal to completeness. But in the Nicomachaean Ethics Aristotle shows that the relevant sort of completeness needs more careful explanation than it receives in the other works; when we see that completeness allows addition we also see that it does not justify the belief that a complete time is a lifetime, and therefore does not justify the demand for security and permanence. Nothing else justifies these demands either; happіness need not be secure and permanent, and a stroke of ill fortune that ends my prosperity neither ensures that I never was happy nor necessarily deprives me of the prospect of future happiness. Contrary to Solon's view, I may be happy in some periods of my life and not in others. [13-14]

『마그나 모랄리아』와 『유데모스 윤리학』에서는 사람들이 바라는 안전성과 지속성을 "완전성(completeness)"에 호소하여 옹호한다. 그러나 『니코마코스 윤리학』에서 아리스토텔레스는 이와 관련된 종류의 완전성이 다른 저작들에서처럼 단순히 제시되어서는 안 되며, 더 신중한 설명이 필요하다는 점을 보여준다. 우리가 완전성이 덧붙임(addition)을 허용한다는 사실을 알게 될 때, 우리는 ‘완전한 시간’이 곧 ‘한 평생’이라는 믿음이 정당화되지 않으며, 따라서 안전성과 지속성에 대한 요구도 정당화되지 않는다는 점을 깨닫게 된다. 그리고 이러한 요구를 정당화해 줄 다른 어떤 것도 없다. 행복은 반드시 안전하고 지속적일 필요가 없으며, 불운의 한 순간이 내 번영을 끝맺는다고 해서 내가 결코 행복하지 않았다는 것을 의미하지도 않고, 앞으로의 행복 가능성을 반드시 빼앗는 것도 아니다. 솔론의 견해와는 달리, 나는 내 삶의 어떤 시기에는 행복할 수 있고, 또 다른 시기에는 그렇지 않을 수도 있다. [13–14]

6. Virtue and Reason

virtue is dominant in happiness.

1. The rational agent will correctly value rational agency over its external results.

2. He will correctly value rigid states of character and attachment to particular goals overa flexible character adapted to external circumstances.

3. He will correctly regard as dominant those rational and rigid states of character that secure complete happiness in moderately favourable external circumstances.

 

• 이성적 행위자는 이성적 행위(rational agency)를 그것의 외적 결과보다 더 올바르게 평가할 것이다.
• 그는 외부 상황에 따라 유연하게 적응하는 성격보다, 뚜렷한 성격 상태와 특정 목표에 대한 헌신을 더 올바르게 평가할 것이다.
• 그는 이성적이며 견고한 성격 상태들이, 적당히 유리한 외적 조건 속에서 완전한 행복을 보장한다는 점에서 그것들이 지배적이라고 올바르게 간주할 것이다. [15]

If he preferred the external results over the character and action themselves, he would be forgetting that he is a rational agent. For he would be willing to subordinate the exercise of the rational agency that is essential to him to some good that is good for some less essential aspect of him. [16]

7. Virtue and Stability

Aristotle considers a rational agent planning for his own interest. As we have seen, such an agent attaches dominant value to the exercise of practical reason. He also considers himself as a temporally extended rational agent concerned for himself and for his persistence as the same rational agent. Aristotle wants to argue that the right plans for my future will prescribe the persistence, as far as possible, of the aims, concerns, and states of character that belong to my present self. The more adaptable and flexible my character is, the more readily I will destroy myself in trying to achieve the results I value. The adaptable person wants to adapt himself to secure his own interests. But in making himself flexible and refusing to form a fixed character, he allows less of himself tot persist into the future. In adapting himself he partly destroys himself; and hence he will fail to secure his own interest. [18]

아리스토텔레스는 자기 자신의 이익을 계획하는 이성적 행위자(rational agent)를 상정한다. 앞서 살펴보았듯, 이러한 행위자는 실천 이성의 발휘에 지배적인 가치를 둔다. 또한 그는 자신을 시간에 걸쳐 지속되는 이성적 행위자, 즉 자기 자신과 자기 존재의 지속에 관심을 두는 존재로 간주한다. 아리스토텔레스는 이렇게 주장하고자 한다. 즉, 내가 미래를 위해 수립하는 올바른 계획들은, 가능한 한 현재의 나에게 속한 목적들, 관심들, 성격 상태들이 지속되는 것을 요구해야 한다는 것이다. 하지만 내 성격이 더 유연하고 적응력이 높을수록, 내가 소중히 여기는 어떤 결과들을 이루려는 과정에서 오히려 나 자신을 더 쉽게 파괴하게 된다. 적응적인 사람은 자신의 이익을 지키기 위해 자신을 변화시키려 한다. 그러나 그는 고정된 성격을 형성하기를 거부하고 자신을 유연하게 만들면서, 결국 미래로 지속될 자기 자신 일부를 포기하게 된다. 자기 자신을 조정하는 가운데 그는 자기 자신을 부분적으로 파괴하게 되며, 그 결과 오히려 자신의 진정한 이익을 확보하지 못하게 된다.

The claims about rationality and stability suggest why being virtuous seems to Aristotle to be a dominant component of happiness. Someone who pursues other goods when they require abandonment of goals dependent on rational activity, or when they require dissolution of a stable character, has forgotten that he was concerned with happiness for a human being and for himself as the human being he is. Finding what might be good for another sort of being or for someone other than himself is no answer to Aristotle's question. Since we could not secure happiness for ourselves by sacrificing rationality or stability, we could never have reason to prefer any other good over these, if we are choosing rationally and aiming at our own happiness. [21]

이성(rationality)과 안정성(stability)에 관한 이러한 주장들은, 왜 덕을 갖춘 삶이 아리스토텔레스에게 행복의 지배적인 요소로 여겨지는지를 설명해준다. 만약 어떤 사람이 이성적 활동에 의존하는 목표를 포기해야만 얻을 수 있는 다른 선들을 추구하거나, 안정된 성격 상태를 해체해야만 얻을 수 있는 선들을 추구한다면, 그는 자신이 인간으로서의 행복, 그리고 그 자신으로서의 행복을 추구하고 있었다는 사실을 잊은 것이다. 다른 존재 유형에게 좋을 수 있는 것이 무엇인지, 또는 자기 자신이 아닌 어떤 타인에게 좋을 수 있는 것이 무엇인지를 찾아내는 것은, 아리스토텔레스가 던진 질문에 대한 답이 아니다. 우리가 이성이나 안정성을 희생함으로써는 자기 자신의 행복을 확보할 수 없다면, 이성적으로 선택하고 자신의 행복을 목표로 삼고 있는 한, 이성이나 안정성보다 어떤 다른 선을 우선시할 이유는 결코 없다. [21]

8. Virtue and Completeness

Aristotle, then, must accept the view that Tennyson has made a commonplace, that failing is better than not trying.5 His conception of the dominant component of happiness explains the truth of the commonplace. By attemptingaworthy project the optimist has exercised his practical reason to make a desirable difference to the world; even if he fails and suffers pain for his failure, he is better off for having exercised his practical reason in this way than if, like the pessimist, he had decided not to exercise it at all. Pessimistic assumptions encourage the agent to narrow the area in which he can exercise practical reasoning; in deciding not to forma plan requiring non-pessimistic assumptions about external conditions, he makes one rational decision, but denies himself the opportunity of making others. He would be justified only if the failure of his attempts would make him worse off than he would have been by not making them. But he cannot reasonably believe this if he attaches dominant value to character and practical reasoning; for in that case he cannot count the harm resulting from failure as greater than the benefit of having made the attempt. [22-23]

결국 아리스토텔레스는 테니슨(Tennyson)이 널리 알린 통념―실패하는 것이 시도조차 하지 않는 것보다 낫다는 생각―을 받아들여야 한다. 그리고 그가 말하는 행복의 지배적 요소 개념은 이 통념이 참인 이유를 설명해 준다. 가치 있는 프로젝트를 시도함으로써, 낙관주의자는 세상에 바람직한 변화를 만들기 위해 자신의 *실천 이성(practical reason)*을 발휘했다. 비록 그가 실패하고, 그 실패로 인해 고통을 겪었다 하더라도, 그는 실천 이성을 그렇게 발휘했다는 점에서 더 나은 상태에 있다. 반면, 비관주의자처럼 아예 그것을 실행하지 않기로 결정했다면 그렇지 않았을 것이다. 비관주의적인 가정은 행위자로 하여금 실천 이성을 발휘할 수 있는 영역 자체를 좁히도록 만든다. 그는 외적 조건들에 대해 비관주의적 가정을 전제하지 않고서는 세울 수 없는 계획을 아예 세우지 않기로 결정함으로써, 한 번의 이성적 결정을 내리긴 하지만, 다른 이성적 결정들을 내릴 기회는 스스로 차단해 버린다. 이러한 비관주의자는 오직 한 경우에만 정당화될 수 있다. 즉, 자신이 어떤 시도를 했을 경우 생겼을 실패의 결과가, 시도하지 않았을 때보다 자신을 더 나쁘게 만들었을 경우이다. 그러나 그가 *성격(character)*과 실천 이성에 지배적인 가치를 둔다면, 그는 결코 그렇게 믿을 수 없다. 왜냐하면 그런 경우 그는 실패로 인한 해악이 시도함으로써 얻는 이익보다 더 크다고 간주할 수 없기 때문이다.

9. Virtue and Inflexibility

The Aristotelian virtues of character are intended to secure complete happiness, in the right external circumstances. [23]

He avoids the over-valuation of external goods that leads someone to be excessively adaptable; he will not compromise his virtuous aims and outlook to secure external goods, desirable though they are. [24]