Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind

by Edith Hall

But it was probably Aristotle’s works on ethics and political theory that Alexander found most helpful. In his two books on ethics, the Nicomachean Ethics and the Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle posits happiness (eudaimonia) or “living well” as the fundamental goal in human life. Eudaimonia is an activity rather than an abstract state, and the function of human life is to perform this activity. Living well is equivalent to living rationally, in an examined and carefully considered way, in accordance with virtue (arete). Aristotle’s political theory was an extension of this ethical position to the whole community or city-state (polis), since happiness is the goal of the city-state and the reason for its existence. In his Politics, he notoriously argued for the superiority of Greeks and their natural right to rule other peoples and to enslave them through warfare, a political philosophy that matched Alexander’s aspirations perfectly.