Made for Happiness: Discovering the Meaning of Life with Aristotle

Great read, a lot to ponder.

I did not enjoy this book.

i bought this book for my philosophy class but never read it but we did talk about it alot so as far as i can gather its a great book for philosophy beginers and just a way to look at stuff differently but for more intellectual minds its kinda not to that level.

This is a unique book from a unique person. Jean Vanier is one of the great contemporary champions of the excluded members of society. After several decades of organising and living in homes for the excluded, he revisits the topic of his PhD dissertation in order to make an accessible explanation of Aristotle's philosophy of the meaning of life. In the first five chapters he summarises Aristotle's philosophy and interprets it according to Vanier's view of contemporary life. In the last chapter he gives his own criticisms and perspective.Aristotle's Philosophy as interpreted by Vanier:Aristotle was not impressed by the theoretical spirituality of his teacher Plato. Aristotle explains how we can be happy and live a fulfilling and moral life based on humane ethics, that is, a system of morality that integrates our human nature, our "deepest" human desires, our need for society and our role in it. "Ethics help us to clarify what is a truly human act, what justice is and what the best activities are--those that render us more human and happiest. They help us better understand to what our freedom is calling us." "Being human does not mean simply obeying the laws that come from outside, but attaining maturity. Being human means becoming as perfectly accomplished as possible." For Aristotle, this accomplishment derives from the exercise of the most perfect activity: that of seeking the truth in all things, shunning lies and illusion, acting in accordance with justice, and transcending oneself to act for the good of others in society. "Man is by nature a political animal."The ethics of desire: "The good is that to which all things aim." Health is the good to which medicine aims. Victory is the good to which strategy aims. Different goods form a hierarchy. We want health in order to study. We study in order to get a job, and that in order to earn money in order to survive and be happy. But we should aim at our own individual, ultimate goods for their own sake in order to take responsibility for our lives. Otherwise we are like an archer without a target. We simply follow along and are prompted by what others want, but not aiming for what is right for us. Our desires are corporeal or spiritual; we have to discern, sort out superficial desires, and listen to our heart's profound and "most true" desire, "the deepest, most unifying desire, the one that is going to help [us] to become fully human." We can enjoy food, work, family and friends, but, writes Vanier, these "goods" are "oriented towards the principal excellent activity". For Aristotle, we ultimately identify living well and doing well with being happy. We become happy by achieving union with the good that is innately within us; we are made for happiness. However, Vanier points out that we are all wounded, so we have to learn if our desires are misguided, such as a subconscious fears, guilt, or the desire to impress others or to please or counter one's family and friends, that drive the decisions that we as adults should take individually.Activity: For Aristotle, happiness is that activity in man which is the finest, the greatest and springs from the light that is in him. Happiness comes from acting with virtue: the intellectual virtues, such as art, science, wisdom and intelligence, as well as the virtues of inner substance, such as courage, temperance and justice. Happiness is not a state but a vital activity proceeding from within each human being. It is the completely joyous activity of one who is entirely, with his intelligence and his whole being, oriented towards that which is nobler and greater than himself. A good person is an egoist in the sense that she desires her own perfection of goodness and perfection of activity. We should not make the mistake of thinking that pleasure is the end, for the end is the activity itself. If pleasure is the end, it will disappear as soon as it is grasped. Loving one's partner just for "the pleasure of love" is not real love and leads to boredom and the desire to seek another partner. Activity can be creative or contemplative in the search of truth. "The nobler the object, the greater the pleasure." Ensuring that justice is done, for example, gives rise to greater pleasure than savouring one of life's comforts. The frantic rushing around in pursuit of appeasement of desire is harmful to us. Happiness can be achieved by the struggle to overcome base desires and aim for nobler pleasures. To seek to know and contemplate the truth and to do great things in society, each according to his or her abilities, therein lies happiness.For Aristotle, friendship is a key ingredient for happiness. Friendship starts by reciprocal recognition of virtue. Ideal friendship is focussed on the good of the other, as opposed to friendship that based on utility or pleasantness. Ideal friendship for Aristotle consists of a life in common, in sharing vital activities, in the making of the same choices, or in the sharing of the same pain or joy. Justice pushes us to respect others, but friendship pushes us radically beyond ourselves and to desire the good for our friend, to strive more to love than to be loved. Doing good together is what makes us good friends. We wish our friends not only health, pleasure and success, but the fullness of life achieved by the pursuit of truth culminating in contemplation and through pursuing justice actively. Only those who devote themselves to wisdom and at the same time live out their humanity with friends and family and within the context of the state will know the most complete happiness.Vanier's conclusion:The last chapter gives Vanier's view of the shortcomings and greatness of Aristotle's philosophy as seen from modern times. If Vanier were to devise a modern moral philosophy, he writes, then he would start with three affirmations: that we respect the absolute value of all humans; that we disdain nobody or risk oppression and war; and that we need others to progress towards fullness. Aristotle valued people according to their intellectual capacity. Aristotle worried about overpopulation, accepted abortion and disdained deformed births. Aristotle considered women and slaves as inferior. He made some racist comments. Vanier points out Aristotle's heartless utilitarianism: the rich man achieves greatness by helping the poor but for Aristotle it would a sign of inferiority for a rich man to accept anything from a poor man. Aristotle could not conceive that weak people can help strong people to become human. For Aristotle, the husband and wife have a utilitarian relationship where each brings specific capacities, but he commands and she obeys. Aristotle overlooks the love and the communion of sharing the beautiful sides and the weak sides of two partners. In Aristotle's time, the importance of the parent-child relationship was underestimated. Aristotle shows little compassion for the poor and the weak. His philosophy is elitist and only applied to people, like Aristotle, who do not have to worry about their next meal. The magnanimous man is not stressed (p156). Aristotle approved of this static caste system and would have perceived social mobility or social evolution as negative because it threatens stability.Vanier: "Happiness then consists not of achieving the greatest possible autonomy, in which we appear strong and capable, but of a sharing of hearts and humility in relation to one another. Thus the child can humanize the man in the same way that a person who is weak and bereft can release the goodness, tenderness and compassion in him, and thereby help him to discover a new inner unity and communion."Vanier points out that Aristotle's rationalism was not as dry as some perceive it. For Aristotle, knowledge begins with astonishment and wonder at the universe and culminates in the wonder, peace and rest of contemplation, or in works of justice in the city-state. Unlike philosophies aimed at mere self-consciousness, Aristotle insists on orienting towards others. Aristotle's political vision has strongly just elements. The objective of rulers is to lead each citizen to a happy life in accordance with virtue, and therefore the state should support education of a sense of integrity and civic responsibility. We should strive not only for liberty but also for the culture of society and humanity.Aristotelian ethics are realistic because they are based on humanity's fundamental nature. Aristotle wisely seeks to reinforce all the positive energies that might make us more human, more just, more open to others, and therefore happy. Aristotle's reality was based on the senses and on life here and now. For Aristotle, happiness implies the integration of the body and its frailties. Aristotle is an optimist: he trusts the world and believes the human is built for happiness. With good laws, good dispositions, good education, good choices and much struggle, we can achieve happiness.My comments:The West might have been different today if the Christian Church had adopted more of Aristotle's approach and less of Plato's. For Plato and his later followers (Augustine, Aquinas), "the soul seeks to separate itself from the body in order to rejoin the idea of good". Plato's true reality was transcendental to the senses. He did not trust the world that killed Socrates. Plato's view was that it is dangerous to give individuals too much liberty and different viewpoints too much latitude, because it leaves the door open for subversion. From Augustine to this day, the Catholic Church condemns that which is "worldly" and the Vatican puts more value on the afterlife of its faithful (which is achieved by obedience to the Church's principles) than on reducing their suffering. The Vatican prefers an authoritarian country whose citizens suffer reduced freedom but whose government follows Catholic principles (anti-homosexual, anti-abortion, etc.) to a liberal country with free citizens but whose government is tolerant of homosexuals and allows abortions.Aristotle's elitist perspective was as unrepresentative of humanity then as it is now; a small minority do not have to worry about material survival and the great majority struggle under constant stress. Vanier's example cases show little middle ground between the bad (contemporary) life and the good simple life. His examples include drug addicts or rich executives who have got it all wrong. What about people that are somewhere in the middle of life, trying to live rightly but whose spiritual life is limited by stress and basic concerns? Vanier points out that we are all wounded and that we become human also by accepting each other's weaknesses. There is a long road between the utter weakness of each individual and the noble goals that Aristotle sets for us. Vanier does not mention other theories of happiness, such as Mazlow's pyramid or more modern research into happiness, that attempt to cover the middle ground.Aristotle recognises that happiness is also partly dependent on chance. What if an individual has been reasonably lucky in life, fulfils the ideal of Aristotle (is authentic, just, and helpful to society, has good friends, has the courage to be optimistic), but is still not happy? Aristotle's theory depends on the assumption that we ultimately identify living well and doing well with being happy. Whether from a Western or an Eastern view, transcending oneself and doing well for others is considered ultimately good. Aristotle assumes that we will be happy when we get there. This assumption overlooks, for example, physiologically induced depression, unhappiness caused by unavoidable stress, or the kind of darkness and debilitating doubt that any intelligent person can feel.Aristotle's ideal friendship is a noble goal, but what about friends who just get together to be with each other, to chat, to laugh, to relax. In another context, Vanier himself said that a friend is someone that we are happy to waste time with. Sometimes we laugh together at our weakness and baseness. This is more typically human than phoning up a friend to get together and be noble. Similarly, individuals may have less vocation towards justice activisim but may contribute to society in their own meaningful way; why would they be less happy than justice activists?Aristotle's ethics of happiness, as described by Vanier, have substantial circularity. The claim is that ethics help us to identify that which is truly human, and whatever is truly human is good. Maturity is defined as that force that helps us go beyond our superficial or misguided desires to our profound desires. Vanier says that our most profound desires are good; presumably if they are bad then we are simply still misguided and have to mature. This maturing beyond misguided desires may very well not take place even as the person ages. Even an unusually "good" person can be unaware that his or her own profound desires are tainted by intolerance. Although he is a remarkably good man in many ways, Vanier reveals his own intolerance in the book and shows that his values close him to the values that others have. First, Vanier sees Aristotelian self consciousness, which is oriented towards others, as being very different from "Eastern" consciousness of self through emptiness. He writes that, unlike Aristotle's "happiness by union with the good within us", Buddhism aims to cope with suffering through suppression of desire and inner emptiness. Vanier's remarks on Eastern "mysticism" repeatedly ignore the empathy, i.e., orientation towards others, that is very much part of the Buddhist message. The two perspectives are not so far apart: Aristotle says "living well and doing well lead to happiness"; Buddha says "right living and right action lead to less suffering". Second, Vanier vaguely describes homosexuality as a transgression of nature similar to incest or perverse heterosexuality (p51). Third, Vanier describes all human life as "sacred" and bluntly describes abortion as "shocking" and "infanticide"; since we cannot prove otherwise, Vanier implies, abortion after 8 hours or 8 months of pregancy is infanticide, and he gives no consideration of the woman's situation (e.g., raped by her family, destitute, severely disabled). This hard-line attitude contradicts with Vanier's call for moral maturity, which must include toleration and moderation. Vanier is critical of Aristotle's concern about, and proposed solutions for, overpopulation. Granted that the world's population is currently unsustainable and will be utterly unsustainable when it peaks in the 21st century, it's a pity that Vanier does not take Aristotle's concern about overpopulation seriously or propose his own solution. There will be immense human suffering. Perhaps the victims will console themselves by reading Vanier's book.

Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher writes that the fundamental human quest is for happiness. In other words, man is made for happiness. He possesses an innate desires to do good, to enjoy life as well as to pursue happiness. This quest takes in the form of friendship, pleasure, and a search for truth, justice and freedom. It is based on Jean Vanier's doctoral thesis entitled: "Happiness as Principle and End of Aristotelian Ethics." In it, the author shares his insights about Aristotelian understanding of the fundamental makeup and purpose of man: Toward Happiness.Vanier points out how messed up our contemporary world is, to find meaning in life through materialism, money and power. He argues convincingly that these things do not necessarily bring happiness. Instead, they only add more stress and pressure to an already frantic soul in an increasingly anxious world. More disturbingly, man has confused what true happiness is. Enters Aristotle. Enters hope. Enters the masterful guiding hands of the founder of L'Arche. Vanier helps us link together the many different expressions of being human. Marrying the psychological, the ethical, the morality and spirituality of being human, Vanier illuminates the Aristotelian observation that man is made to be happy through `logos,' `virtue' and `activity.' `Logos' as the reason, the initial impetus of how and why man does certain things; `virtue' being the desire to want to do good in this world, and `activity' as an outward expression of this happiness quest. This is all part of being human.What makes this book particularly helpful is that it does not lock the reader into the metaphysical realm of philosophy or intellect as the author works through Aristotelian ethics. Using examples, anecdotes and frequent quotations from primary sources, the author applies ancient philosophy with contemporary applications. Thus, Vanier has helped to connect intellectual with the affectual, the head with the heart. This is the single most valuable reason to read this book. I especially appreciate the tribute Vanier renders to this great philosopher, especially after critiquing certain parts of Aristotelian Ethics."Aristotle is a wise man. He seeks to reinforce all the positive energies that might help the men of his time to become more human, more just, more open to others, and by virtue of this very fact, to be happier, or to rediscover the fact that they were made for happiness." (198)conrade

The book I received is missing 10 pages.

I suggest Jean Vanier`s book, Made for Happiness, (Discovering the Meaning of Life with Aristotle), a little book which is for us lay readers, and is eminently readable. Vanier`s language reveals Aristotle in clear and useful ways and brings his humanity and generosity to life, bringing him down from the pedestal upon which he was placed and shows us the charm, simplicity, beauty and practicality of his thinking. Vanier walks us through Aristotle`s thinking and shows us Aristotle`s discovery of that which those of his time found essential to happiness, essentials that stand the test of time.

Vanier helped me to understand Aristotle and the idea of meaning of life.