its proper virtue will be perfect happiness. That this activity is contemplative we have already said.15
Quite a number of thinkers in the Western tradition, from Socrates and the Stoic philosophers to Schopenhauer and Adam Smith, espoused the notion that some form of deliberation constitutes the supreme good of life. In Eastern thought, one sees this view endorsed in the Buddhist, Confucian, Zen, and Taoist quest for a tranquil state of mind. Lao Tse's query runs:
Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?16
Aristotle's ideas about contemplation resemble the Zen-like state creative artists experience when, intensely focused, ordinary thought is suspended. In this state, troubles seem to disappear. The artist Botero said he only started existing when working in his studio, a refuge from the world's violence. He felt superb fulfillment, finding harmony in precise form coupled with correct color. A profound joy he likened to lovemaking issued from a magical, unexpected moment. A sense of peace pervaded the canvas and his heart.17
How about the quest for riches? Aristotle dismisses this pursuit with the claim that we do not go after money for its own sake. What people genuinely want is not wealth as such. They seek to get at something else by means of their wealth. As Aristotle states, “The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.”18 What a person is truly after will fall into one of three categories: pleasure, recognition, or using the intellect in leisure. A skeptic might argue that Aristotle is overlooking the possibility that one might gleefully go after treasures, reveling in the hunt itself, as one might enjoy fishing or hunting. Acquiring immense wealth is like a game, a critic might say: the more money you make, the higher your score. We've all heard the line, “The one with the most toys at the end wins.” Yet this view is implicit in Aristotle's observation that “some men turn every quality or art into a means of getting wealth; this they conceive to be the end, and to the promotion of the end they think all things must contribute.”19 To be sure, Aristotle has a ready response. Someone chasing money for sport is in fact most interested in showing how great they are in winning the money game. On this point, Aristotle has the winning argument. He shows that, in the end, virtue is actually the good. Taking another swipe at the obsession for money grabbing, Aristotle claims that it not only saps our opportunity for engaging in leisure, it also tends to make us forget that, after all, wealth is not itself an end, but rather a means to attain the end of happiness. In Aristotle's words, “Some persons are led to believe that…the whole idea of their lives is that they ought either to increase their money without limit, or at any rate not to lose it. The origin of this disposition in men is that they are intent upon living only, and not upon living well; and, as their desires are unlimited, they also desire that the means of gratifying them should be without limit.”20
Many people get trapped in a vicious cycle: unaware of the endless futility that occurs when no matter how much you get, you only want more. So Aristotle's thinking equips us with a way of understanding our own greed beyond that which our culture provides. Aristotle's thought gives a powerful vantage point from which to look at contemporary business. Consider the claim that some business practices leave people endlessly treading a hamster wheel. Aristotle is not averse to one's acquisition of goods from the natural world, as in farming, fishing, or hunting.21 Likewise, he is not against acquiring goods through exchange where such is required to satisfy a demand for goods (for example, shoes) that can be produced with greater efficiency by others (shoemakers). Here, the process of exchange serves to correct natural inequality in distributions of resources and talent, reallocating them in accordance with the natural arrangement of human wants. Aristotle makes the point as follows:
For example, a shoe is used to wear, and is used for exchange; both are uses of the shoe. He who gives a shoe in exchange for money or food to him who wants one, does indeed use the shoe as a shoe, but this is not its proper or primary purpose, for a shoe is not made to be an object of barter. The same may be said of all possessions, for the art of exchange extends to all of them, and it arises at first from what is natural, from the circumstance that some have too little, others too much.22
The moral difficulty comes when we enter into the business of trade, where exchange is undertaken solely for financial reward. Yet this is precisely how a lot of business is conducted in the modern capitalist economy. Since there are no built-in limits to how much accumulation can result from trade (as distinct from the sort of exchange mentioned above, where natural wants impose constraints), Aristotle claims that involvement in trade leads us to harbor an illusion of unlimited accumulation of wealth. Rather than working cooperatively, assisting others in realizing their human capabilities, the enterprise of trade pits us in competition with each other. Consequently, we start to see other people as mere opportunities for amassing more and more profit. As Aristotle puts it, “There are two sorts of wealth-getting, as I have said; one is a part of household management, the other is retail trade: the former necessary and honourable, while that which consists in exchange is justly censured; for it is unnatural, and a mode by which men gain from one another.”23 Compounding this moral problem, for Aristotle, is the practice of money trading over time. In other words, extending loans—with interest. The proper end for money lies in facilitating exchanges of goods, not in concocting yet more money. Thus, as Aristotle says:
The most hated sort [of wealth-getting], and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.24
But how realistic is it to abide by a stricture against lending money with interest in today's economy? After all, how would firms ever obtain the financial backing to get off the ground? Plus, we'd have to gut our savings to buy big-ticket items like cars, houses, and appliances. However, for Aristotle, there is a different priority at stake in commercial life: it falls on virtue to oversee the quest for wealth. Because it is the highest good, virtue is not to be sacrificed to pursue affluence. The true moral objective in life is lurking within the quest for the summum bonum driving the most virtuous elite. In other words, true happiness is not found in the preoccupation with creature comforts so characteristic of the masses.
To grasp how Aristotle reaches this conclusion, bear in mind that he considers happiness an activity. His notion of happiness does not exactly match our modern understanding. For Aristotle, a person is not happy if they are not performing well, regardless of what they are doing. To say something is performing well, for Aristotle, is to say that it is fulfilling its function or role. The function of a violin is to produce musical sounds. We would say that a violin that satisfies that function well is an excellent violin. Similarly, we all have some notion of what is means for a person to be an outstanding business executive, or a fine chef, or a superb musical conductor. And yet it will not suffice to just turn to conventional social roles to ascertain the broader meaning of satisfying a role or function with excellence. After all, ethics concerns what it is that leads human beings to be happy. Ethics is not about the narrow question of what renders this or that person happy. Thus, reasons Aristotle, we need to arrive at some understanding of the function or role of humans as such:
Since happiness is an activity of soul in accordance with perfect virtue, we must consider the nature of virtue; for perhaps we shall thus see better the nature of happiness. The true student of politics, too, is thought to have studied virtue above all things; for he wishes to make his fellow citizens good and obedient to the laws…. And if this inquiry belongs to political science, clearly the pursuit of it will be in accordance with our original plan. But clearly the virtue we must study is human virtue; for the good we were seeking was human good and the happiness human happiness. By human virtue we mean not that of the body but that of the soul; and happiness also we
