Flow: NE 10.1–5

Aristotle sets out his question using nouns: What or what kind of thing is pleasure (NE 10.4)? He answers by switching from nouns to verbs: pleasure completes activity. The word for “completes” (teleiō) shares a root with “endy” (teleion). (The active verb form is unusual enough that standard Greek-English dictionaries cite this passage.) Aristotle seems to be struggling for words and resorts to a metaphor: “Pleasure completes activity … as a sort of end (telos) that comes to be upon something, like the bloom (hōra) on young men (akmaios)” (1174b31–33). Interpreters have struggled to make sense of this. One prominent twentieth-century philosopher accuses Aristotle of “babbling.”⁴ Other readers take hōra and akmaios to refer to the prime of one’s life (thirty to fifty years old) but are unable to find any substance in the image.⁵ Against all of this, James Warren argues that NE 10.4 must be understood within the context of Greek homoerotic relationships.⁶ Aristotle likens pleasure to that hard-to-describe aura or vibe given off by the healthy, fit, young men that filled Greek gyms. In the realm of victory poetry, Pindar credits this bloom of youth as the attribute that made Zeus pick the Trojan prince Ganymede to be his beloved cupbearer (Olympian 10.104). Likewise, Pindar opens Nemean 8 by addressing Bloom as a goddess: “Lady Bloom, herald of Aphrodite’s ambrosial tenderness / who sits on the eyelids of youthful girls and boys.”

If the bloom of youth is meant to be understood in erotic terms, what does this tell us about the theory of pleasure Aristotle is trying to articulate? NE 10.4 presents pleasure as arising from excellent activity, strengthening and supporting it in a virtuous cycle, like a choir singing in a resonant, supportive acoustic.⁷ I suggest that we have found this kind of virtuous circle in NE’s various depictions of ornaments (kosmoi) in the virtuous person’s goods of fortune (NE 1.10), the big spender’s house (NE 4.2), and the great-spirited person’s relation to honors (NE 4.3). In each case, I argued for an athletic reading of kosmos in which inner worth is made manifest through virtuous activity, which results in outward goods, which, in turn, provide the means for further excellent activity. Greatness of spirit, likewise, is a kosmos of the character virtues and thus makes their work greater (NE 4.3). We might even add NE 9.9–12’s practice (askēsis) of virtue, in which friends engage in cycles of mutual benefit in ways that blur the line between moral training through repeated action and the mature use of virtues in one’s life work. In all these instances, Aristotle presents aspects of happiness as cycles of positive reinforcement, all aimed at the awesome (kalon). All of these fit NE 7.11–14’s discussion of pleasure as connected to unimpeded activity, as well as NE 10.1–5’s bloom of youth.⁸ In short, elements of flow are woven throughout NE, first and foremost in passages presenting the athletic reading of kosmos.

If the parallels between the bloom of youth and the athletic kosmos are so strong, we may wonder why Aristotle does not simply use the term kosmos in NE 10. First, as Warren argues, there is a good chance that Aristotle is responding to a discussion in Plato’s late dialogue Philebus. Here, Socrates attempts to explain pleasure by analogy to a homosexual couple. By invoking similar terms, Aristotle makes the connection apparent. But there are further reasons, internal to NE, for Aristotle to avoid kosmos here. Earlier, goods of fortune, honor, wealth, and a house were all listed as kosmoi of virtuous activity. Each of these, though, is separate from the activities that produce them, even if the virtuous actors turn around and make good use of them. Greatness of spirit fares better, insofar as it is intimately bound up with the other virtues of character and ultimately secures their unity. Even here, though, greatness of spirit comes last. As with an athletic crown, which is bestowed after an event has ended, greatness of spirit comes only when all the other virtues are in place. By contrast, where there is excellent activity, there is pleasure. The image of crowning a victor leads to yet one more potential disconnect: the crown goes only to those who compete, yet competing is no guarantee of actually winning. Even when a competitor gives his all and accomplishes wonderful feats, someone else may still outdo him. As I have argued in previous chapters, Aristotle speaks of kosmoi involved in virtuous cycles; he treats these as processes that happen only usually. Pleasure, it seems, is different: when the conditions are right, there is no stopping it.

Aristotle completes his account by providing criteria for ranking pleasures (NE 10.5). This hearkens back to NE 1.7’s ergon argument, which set out animals’ characteristic activities: perception for dogs, reason for humans. While we share with other animals the ability to perceive, our highest pleasure will come from our highest (and most characteristic) activity, reason. What is more, given the account of pleasure as flow, it follows that those who reason well feel more pleasure than those who reason poorly. Finally, Aristotle claims, the highest pleasure will come when we reason well about the best object of reasoning. What are the best objects of thought? As a first pass, most people can agree that thinking about lofty subjects such as the creation of the universe is more enjoyable than filing taxes. The one topic pushes our reason to its limits, the other does not. These three criteria—best faculty, best activity, best object—taken together give a scheme for ranking activities by the pleasures they bring us. On the low end of perception is a person with a head cold who can just barely smell his cough syrup, which does not smell very good to start with. At the high end of perception is a healthy person with a good palette enjoying a gourmet meal. For practical reasoning, there are people who struggle to fill out tax forms on the low end and people who thrive at politics on the high end. Theoretical reasoning takes us higher still, from struggling through a sudoku to understanding the deep truths of the universe in a glance. In all these cases, “the proper pleasure increases activity.”⁹ If we accept that some pleasures are more proper to rational human beings than others, then this account of pleasure has profound implications for how we live.

Expansive and Narrow Views of Happiness: NE 10.6–8

The takeaway from NE 10’s discussion of pleasure, to put it in Csikszentmihalyi’s terms, is that we should maximize flow in our lives, not because the pleasure of flow is our goal, but because by doing so, we live up to our full potential as human beings. To put this into practice, though, we are still left with two basic questions. First, is the best human life one that embraces a wide range of excellent activities or the one that includes one outstandingly excellent activity? Second, if we take the latter view, is that one outstandingly excellent activity going to be the same for all human beings, or will it vary from individual to individual? These two questions drive the discussion of NE’s six most notorious pages.

NE 10.6 begins by reiterating NE 1.7’s two criteria for eudaimonia, stating that it must be self-sufficient (autarkēs) and endy (teleion). The first challenge Aristotle raises is that pleasures of “childish pastimes” seem to meet these criteria at least as well as a life of excellent activity expressing reason does. Most of us had fun being kids and just playing all day. If you were the beneficiary of a large enough trust fund, would your best life be to spend the rest of your days in one endless summer vacation? Aristotle puts it bluntly: Do we work so we can take vacations, or do we take vacations so that we can work? Work in this case can mean a lot of things. Let us focus on careers, though. According to a 2022 study conducted by the Gallup Corporation, only 33 percent of US workers are actively engaged with their jobs. The number worldwide is even lower: 21 percent. That leaves 79 percent of the world population that is not terribly engaged with what they spend a significant portion of their adult lives doing.¹⁰ From Aristotle’s perspective, this is all horribly wrong. Countries like the United States are awash in material resources, but many Americans forego careers they would find inherently valuable and settle for higher-paying jobs because they think having expensive things will make them happy. But how happy can you be if the only value you see in your work is that it pays well enough to pay for vacations to escape your life? NE 10’s account of pleasure puts this into context. The pleasures of relaxation fail to engage our highest faculties. To see them as the goal of a mature human life aims too low.

NE 10.7–8 takes this account of pleasure to the opposite extreme. If the best pleasure is the one that employs our best faculty in the best way directed at the best object, then it seems that happiness consists in only one activity: study (theōria). This idea appeared in NE 1’s poll concerning the best kind of life, only to be put off until later. Here it finally reappears as a piece of endoxa with roots in the vision of beauty in Plato’s Symposium and Republic’s vision of the form of the good. The elements of mystery cult in Symposium suggest a connection to divinity.¹¹ Aristotle has his own version of this idea, as he presents the gods as blessed, immortal beings who engage in uninterrupted study of theoretical wisdom (Metaphysics 12.9). Our ability to do the same, he suggests at NE 10.7, 1177b26–1178a2, is an element of the divine in us. This passage is the central evidence for the narrow view of happiness. Such a life would be the most endy, in the sense that it provides a most final end for which the rest of one’s life would provide the means. It is also more self-sufficient, insofar as it requires fewer resources than a life devoted to civic engagement and character virtue. What is more, the divine pleasures of study leave such a life lacking nothing.

The main problem with taking a life of study to be Aristotle’s considered view on human happiness is that such a life is not attainable for a human being. Aristotle himself makes this explicit (NE 10.7). While understanding is a divine element in us, it is joined to a mortal, animal nature that needs resources to survive and is essentially social. While we may periodically live up to our full divine potential, we are incapable of engaging in the gods’ continuous study. Aristotle concludes, “We must strive, so far as we can, to become immortal” (1177b33). The question, in practical terms, is how should we spell out this compromise: what role should the divine pleasure of study have in our lives, given that we cannot consistently engage with it across our whole lives? This is the crux of the expansive/narrow debate.

The debate has progressed as each side has stressed how its reading makes better sense of a handful of key passages. The result is what one leading scholar has called an “intellectual chess match” that has outlived its usefulness.¹² If we take a step back, though, we can see that the various options have a lot in common. Advocates of the narrow view make room in the good life for activities other than study. Richard Kraut argues that both the life of theoretical reasoning and the life of practical reasoning constitute human happiness, although practical reasoning takes second place.¹³ Yet Kraut maintains that it is the act of reasoning, and not the resources used by reasoning, that constitute happiness. Gabriel Richardson Lear argues that a life of civic activity, which amounts to the account of happiness championed by the expansive reading, is a second-rate copy of the life of study, yet both types of life meet NE 1’s criteria in that they are shaped by practical and theoretical wisdom.¹⁴ At first glance, these views seem far removed from the expansive reading of Terence Irwin, who claims that happiness consists in a wide range of intrinsic goods, which embraces civic activity, relationships, study, external goods, and so on.¹⁵ Nevertheless, Irwin argues that these goods must be held together in some kind of coherent whole, which requires using the same practical reasoning that Kraut identifies as partially constituting happiness and Richardson Lear makes central to the active life. Given that NE is a self-professedly practical work, we might well ask: What, in the end, is the difference?

On the one hand, making external goods part of what constitutes happiness, as Irwin does, threatens to place happiness outside the individual’s control. In the Priam example of NE 1.8, Aristotle assigns some value to external goods, albeit not great enough value that their loss makes a person miserable. As I argued in chapter 11, Aristotle seems content to think that virtuous activity is usually accompanied by success in the world and the goods that come with it. External goods are a kosmos of virtuous activity that come about as reliably as athletic crowns do. In this, Aristotle seems to want to have it both ways, as though he were claiming that external goods and success matter to happiness, but not really.

On the other hand, the narrow and expansive readings permit different degrees of focus around overarching goals. In discussing NE 4, I argued that the virtues of big spending and greatness of spirit deal with prioritizing goals. While public benefactors and elite performers make up Aristotle’s central examples, I argued that the greatness of these virtues is relative to the individual. These are virtues that are available to people beyond just the rich and famous. Furthermore, given that one may not have any virtue of character in its fullest sense without having all of them, both of these virtues are necessary for happiness. Still, it is possible to be more or less great-spirited. If we recall Angela Duckworth’s goal hierarchies, the grittiest of the gritty tend to arrange all their goals around a single central calling, be it athletic, artistic, or intellectual. Yet people who are still very gritty individuals, such as Duckworth herself, may arrange their lives around a handful of high-level goals such as career and family. How many high-level goals can a person pursue while still embodying great-spirited grit? Aristotle would likely say that the answer is relative to the individual, though I suspect we could count them on a single hand. If we set aside the particular goal set out in the narrow view (study), then the main difference we are left with between the two sides of the debate is the degree of grittiness or greatness of spirit. The narrow reading pushes us toward having as few high-level goals as possible, ideally just one, and arranges the rest of one’s life beneath them. The expansive reading leaves open space for a greater number of high-level goals but cautions that attempting to balance too many high-level pursuits will be self-defeating.

By shifting focus away from study, I may seem to lose sight of what is at stake in the expansive/narrow debate. Questions of prioritizing goals seem pedestrian compared to the divine pleasures of study. We should note, however, that throughout NE Aristotle has taken elite performers as his model for the living of flourishing lives, and much of what he says about elite performers, including the ability to prioritize, lines up well with current empirical research. Those performers have included Olympic athletes, competitive kithara players, public benefactors, politicians, soldiers, and friends. NE 10 adds the intellectual life to the list as one more way human potential can be brought into action. I have argued that these various athletic, musical, and philanthropic examples embody an ethos exemplified by Herakles’s depictions in art, myth, and poetry. The use of athletic images of crowns and kosmoi throughout NE invokes virtuous cycles in which human activity takes on a permanence that approximates the divine in something like Richardson Lear’s sense. While NE 10’s injunction to strive for immortality through study has received the lion’s share of attention, it is just one more example for the list.

A focus on elite performers generally, rather than intellectuals in particular, also suggests a way to retain the core insight of the narrow view. As Duckworth notes, deliberate practice is tiring, especially compared to activities that bring about flow.¹⁶ Since struggling through problems is an insufficiently elevated activity to ascribe to the gods, Aristotle sets it aside as, at best, a penultimate form of happiness. For us mere humans, however, even the most elite performers alternate between deliberate practice and flow. According to NE 10.4–5, the most pleasant activity is also the one that most fully engages our rationality: a flow state turned toward some lofty object. But isn’t this just wrong? Sure, figuring out a math problem might be less pleasant than having already worked it out and simply seeing the solution. But surely the process of working out the answer engages our rational capacities more fully. Implicit in the question is a partitioning off of the activity of working out a solution and the activity of enjoying the solution. The question does not come up for the gods, who enjoy the continuous activity of an already actualized understanding. For actual human life, though, there is no understanding without first coming to understand. For human beings, deliberate practice and flow are two sides of a single coin. This suggests that in the search for models, the narrow/expansive debate has focused too much on Zeus and not enough on Herakles. Becoming divine and already being divine are two different things. If this is right, then the best life for a human is one that involves great rewards but also great labors as we engage in the askēsis of virtue.

Theory into Practice

The point of understanding happiness is to be happy (NE 10.9). But as Aristotle’s account of moral development has shown, this is possible only if children are trained correctly from the start. Aristotle thus draws NE to a close by setting the task for a further work of practical philosophy: Politics. Here he puts NE’s account of happiness to work by laying out features a state would need for its citizens to live happy, flourishing lives. Today, its account of the mean has largely passed into the realm of common sense. Greatness of spirit, by contrast, has become countercultural in the extreme. The ability to focus, prioritize, and keep one’s eye on the ball is a major obstacle in the pursuit of a well-lived life, as witnessed by the dabblers and dreamers, the unengaged and the excellent sheep who fill today’s schools.¹⁷ Aristotle gives us some practical advice on how to move forward, through NE’s discussions of elite athletes and musicians, gym buddies and philosophy buddies, and concrete relationships in which individuals may discern kalon deeds in service of the common good.