Philosophy Exam 2 Q6 - Mill and Aristotle on Happiness and Virtue

Both Mill and Aristotle treat happiness as central to ethics, but they give very different accounts of what happiness is and how morality is grounded.

Both Aristotle and John Stuart Mill place happiness at the center of ethics, but they understand happiness and the basis of morality in very different ways. Aristotle’s account is centered on human flourishing and virtuous activity, while Mill’s utilitarianism evaluates actions by whether they promote the greatest overall happiness.

Compare Aristotle’s account of eudaimonia with Mill’s account of happiness

Aristotle identifies the highest human good as eudaimonia. Although it is often translated as “happiness,” it means more than a pleasant feeling or temporary satisfaction. Eudaimonia is flourishing: living and acting well over the course of a complete life. Aristotle argues that every activity aims at some good. Medicine aims at health, shipbuilding aims at a ship, and people may seek money in order to obtain other things. Because many ends are pursued for the sake of further ends, Aristotle believes there must be a highest end that is chosen for its own sake. This is eudaimonia.

For Aristotle, what makes something good is whether it performs its characteristic function well. A good knife cuts well, and a good doctor restores health effectively. Human beings, however, are distinguished from plants and animals by their capacity for rational activity. Therefore, human flourishing consists in actively exercising reason in accordance with excellence or virtue. A person does not flourish merely by possessing good character traits; they must actually exercise those traits through their choices and actions. Virtue is thus not simply a tool for reaching happiness. Excellent rational and virtuous activity is what happiness fundamentally consists in.

For Aristotle, what determines what it is for a thing to be good and to flourish?

Aristotle identifies the highest human good as eudaimonia. Although it is often translated as “happiness,” it means more than a pleasant feeling or temporary satisfaction. Eudaimonia is flourishing: living and acting well over the course of a complete life. Aristotle argues that every activity aims at some good. Medicine aims at health, shipbuilding aims at a ship, and people may seek money in order to obtain other things. Because many ends are pursued for the sake of further ends, Aristotle believes there must be a highest end that is chosen for its own sake. This is eudaimonia.

For Aristotle, what makes something good is whether it performs its characteristic function well. A good knife cuts well, and a good doctor restores health effectively. Human beings, however, are distinguished from plants and animals by their capacity for rational activity. Therefore, human flourishing consists in actively exercising reason in accordance with excellence or virtue. A person does not flourish merely by possessing good character traits; they must actually exercise those traits through their choices and actions. Virtue is thus not simply a tool for reaching happiness. Excellent rational and virtuous activity is what happiness fundamentally consists in.

For Mill, what determines whether an action is right or wrong, and what does he think morality should be based upon?

Mill also treats happiness as the ultimate end, but his account is hedonistic rather than teleological. According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness and wrong in proportion as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. Mill defines happiness as pleasure and the absence of pain, while unhappiness consists in pain and the deprivation of pleasure. Whether an action is morally right depends on its consequences for everyone affected, not on whether it expresses a person’s rational nature or virtuous character.

Mill’s morality is therefore consequentialist and impartial. An action should be judged by whether it produces the greatest overall balance of happiness over suffering for all sentient beings. The happiness of one person does not count more simply because it is that person’s own happiness. Morality should be based on utility: the promotion of general happiness. Rather than asking whether an individual is flourishing through excellent activity, Mill asks whether an act tends to increase well-being and reduce suffering across the community.

Then compare the role of virtue in the two theories. For Aristotle, how is virtue related to the highest human good?

Virtue plays an important role in both theories, but it has a different status in each. For Aristotle, virtue is directly connected to the highest human good because eudaimonia is activity in accordance with virtue. A person who has courage, generosity, justice, and practical wisdom, and who actively exercises these traits well, is flourishing as a human being. Virtue is not merely valuable because it brings pleasure or other desirable consequences. It is constitutive of living well.

For Mill, is virtue merely a means to happiness, or can it become part of happiness?

Mill initially treats virtue as a means to happiness. Virtuous qualities such as honesty, justice, kindness, and self-control are encouraged because they tend to produce beneficial consequences and prevent harm. However, Mill argues that virtue can eventually become part of happiness itself. Through moral education, habit, and association, a person may come to value virtue for its own sake. Someone may first pursue honesty because it produces trust and social benefits, but eventually they may find integrity intrinsically satisfying and feel distress at acting dishonestly.

Mill compares this process to the way people can come to value money. Money may begin as a means for obtaining food, shelter, or comfort, but people can eventually desire it for its own sake. Similarly, virtue can become an ingredient in a person’s happiness. This does not abandon Mill’s hedonism, because he still holds that pleasure and freedom from pain are the only ultimate ends. Virtue becomes part of happiness because a virtuous person experiences it as something deeply desired and satisfying.

Finally, assess whether Mill’s distinction between higher and lower pleasures brings his theory close to Aristotle’s account of human flourishing or whether their theories remain fundamentally different.

Mill’s distinction between higher and lower pleasures brings him somewhat closer to Aristotle. Mill rejects the idea that all pleasures differ only in quantity. Higher pleasures involve the exercise of intellectual, imaginative, emotional, and moral capacities, while lower pleasures are bodily and sensory satisfactions. Competent judges—people who have experienced both kinds of pleasure—generally prefer the higher pleasures, even when those pleasures involve more difficulty or dissatisfaction. Mill’s claim that it is better to be “Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied” resembles Aristotle’s rejection of a life organized entirely around bodily gratification.

Both philosophers therefore reject crude hedonism and emphasize the importance of developing distinctively human capacities. Both regard intellectual activity, moral character, and the exercise of higher faculties as central to a good life. Mill’s view that virtue can become part of happiness also sounds close to Aristotle’s claim that virtuous activity belongs at the center of flourishing.

Nevertheless, the two theories remain fundamentally different. Mill ultimately values higher activities because they produce a superior kind of pleasure. Even virtue is valuable as part of happiness because it becomes a source of satisfaction for the person who possesses it. Aristotle does not treat pleasure as the standard by which a life is judged. For him, pleasure may naturally accompany excellent activity, but flourishing is grounded in fulfilling the human function through rational and virtuous action.

The theories also differ in their moral focus. Mill evaluates actions by their consequences for total happiness across all affected people. Aristotle is less concerned with calculating aggregate outcomes and more concerned with whether an individual acts from a stable, virtuous character using practical wisdom. Mill asks what will maximize happiness overall; Aristotle asks what a virtuous person would do in the particular circumstances.

Thus, Mill’s account of higher pleasures makes utilitarianism more sensitive to the value of intellect, virtue, and human development. It brings him closer to Aristotle than a purely quantitative version of hedonism would. Still, Mill remains a hedonistic consequentialist, while Aristotle remains a virtue ethicist whose account of happiness is grounded in human function, rational activity, and objective flourishing rather than the maximization of pleasure.