Aristotle:Ethics (Book 1)

Three Prominent Lifestyles: "...life of enjoyment. For there are, we may say, three prominent types of life--that just mentioned, the political, and thirdly the contemplative life."

I'm not sure I fully understand what Aristotle is going for in the Ethics. I don't have a lot of notes about from reading Ethics Book 1. He seems to talk about "goods" that are good in themselves. For example Happiness. We want happiness not because it leads to something else, but because we want to be happy. I'm not sure if he is saying that it's a deeper good because of it's self-sufficient nature, or if he is claiming that self-sufficiency is a "Good" like Happiness.

"...it would clearly be made more desirable by the addition of even the least of goods; for that which is added beomes an excess of goods, and of goods the greater is always more desirable. Happiness, then, is something final and self-sufficient, and is the end of action."

So, it would seem that Happiness is that which is self-sufficient and it is a good attribute of a "Good." The second part I really like in Ethics is in regards to active virtue.

"And as in the Olympic Games it is not the most beautiful and the strongest that are crowned but those who compete (for it is some of these that are victorious), so those who act win, and rightly win, the noble and good things in life."

The final thing I'm pulling from this is that happiness transcends fortune. Life can be terrible, but the person who possess the attribute of happiness retains it.

"For the man who is truly good and wise, we think, bears all the chances of life becomingly and always makes the best of circumstances, as a good general makes the best military use of the army at his command and a good shoemaker makes the best shoes out of the hides that are given him; and so with all other craftsmen. And if this is the case, the happy man can never become miserable; though he will not reach blessedness, if he meet with fortunes like those of Priam."