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Chapter 2 20 eudaimonia has traditionally been translated as ‘happiness’, but is currently more often translated as ‘human flourishing’. However, it is one thing to establish what the highest good in human life is, but another what eudaimonia consists in, or how one is supposed to live a life characterised by it. The first thing that becomes clear about eudaimonia is that it includes both ethics and subjective well-being. 11 A good life is according to Aristotle both a morally good life and an enjoyable life, a life in which things go well. 12 Perhaps this is the reason that many prefer to translate eudaimonia as flourishing, instead of happiness, since the use of the word happiness seems to be restricted to subjective well-being in contemporary philosophy (and other disciplines). 13 In a sense, Aristotle makes an inventory of what men usually do in life to be able to answer what men best should do, in order for them to arrive at a state of eudaimonia . 14 ‘Human good turns out to be activity of the soul exhibiting virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete’. 15 He adds immediately that this ‘activity of the soul’ needs to last ‘a complete life’, because acting virtuously for a moment will not get you a flourishing life; this activity will have to be maintained throughout an entire life. 16 Or, as educational philosopher Kristján Kristjánsson summarises: According to Aristotle, by analysing empirically the proper ‘function’ of human beings (just as we analyse the proper function of a good knife or a good field of wheat), we can ascertain that human flourishing consists of the realisation of virtues of thought and character and the fulfilment of other specifically human physical and mental potentialities over a whole course of life. 17 Virtues are stable ‘characteristics of the soul’, which show themselves in the action of choosing the right mean between two vices (excess and deficiency), which is always dependent on the situation and the person involved. 18 ‘When our desire and our thinking co-operate in the best way, we have moral excellence or virtue’. 19 For example ‘courage’ is a virtue, balancing between ‘rashness’ and ‘cowardice’; what in some situations is courageous, could be judged rash and irresponsible in another. 20 Human beings need practical wisdom ( phronesis ) or the insights of a 11 See also Perry 1986; MacIntyre 1967; Kristjánsson 2007; and Haybron 2008. 12 MacIntyre 1967, p. 59; Kristjánsson 2013, p. 29. 13 See general introduction. 14 See criterion 2. 15 Aristotle 2009, p. 12, 1098a15-20. 16 Idem, and see criterion 2a. 17 Kristjánsson 2013, p. 29. 18 See also Pakaluk 2006, p. 385. 19 Wivestad 2008, p. 314. 20 MacIntyre 1967, p. 64.