Swallowing Happiness in Nicomachean Ethics

In tracing happiness in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, I was forced to think critically about my own perceptions of happiness. How do I become happy? What sustains or creates happiness in my own life?  How does Aristotle's presentation of happiness differ from my assumptions about happiness?

In his first primary argument about politics, Aristotle claims that  "the Good of man must be the end of the science of Politics" (7), and how honestly I want to internalize and agree with this concept. First, what does he mean by this generalized state of good?  As Aristotle later points out every person will define happiness many ways throughout their lives (11), so how then would Politics be able to end with a unified “good of man?" When asked how we are doing most Midwesterners will answer " good", without second thought to how they are truly feeling or the grammatical error in their answer. Could this be because we operate on a generalized state of good, which might be defined as living or getting on? Doesn't Aristotle's assumption that politics will end in the good of man establish a sub argument that every man has the same general state of goodness? If Aristotle believes this to be the case I wish he would explicitly outline what constitutes this state of good, moreover what he finds universally good for humanity.

In presenting happiness in Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle sets up this equation: 'the goodlife'='doing well'= 'being happy' = various definitions of happiness depending on one's current state (11). This equation proves further the fluctuation of this state of goodness, operating under the assumption that it is subject to man's personal experience in his past and in the present. Perhaps this is why we are so let down by politics, because we operate under the Aristotelian assumption that eventually we will all be contained under politics that will hold up goodness for each and everyone of us, despite the irony that we each define this state differently.

Still this fluctuation of happiness is individually advantageous even if it complicates a concept of universal happiness. "Indeed very often the same man says different things at different times: when he falls sick he thinks of health is happiness, when he is poor, wealth" (11). This fluctuation tells us very important things about happiness. First man is in direct control of personal happiness, we decide what makes us happy which is why you meet some people who are perfectly content with little and some people who are only content with much. Second our happiness operates on a strive for what we don't currently have. We are happy to attain wealth only after we are dissatisfied with being poor, and we attain happiness only after being sad. Which I guess in an old wives tale, we've heard a million times, but somehow coming from Aristotle it has sunk in differently than it has before, and I think I might laugh a little bit louder today than I did yesterday. 

-Sophia Koehler-Derrick