1 Permanent Happiness: Aristotle and Solon TA. Irwin 1. Introduction Satan answered the Lard, “Has not Jab gond rea Have you not hedged him round! on every side with your protection, him and his family and all his possessions? Whatever he does blessed, and his herds have increased beyond measure. But stretch out yor hand and touch all that he has, and then he will curse you to your face, m 10 be dob 1 9-11) Many of Aristotle's arguments begin from common beliefs. He does not commit himself to agreement with them; but he recognizes an obliga- tion to explain them—to show the partial truth in the beliefs he rejects, and the grounds for rejecting them (Nicomachaean Ethics EN] 1154a22-5). In his initial claim about happiness he attends closely to common beliefs. When he has defined happiness as an activity of the soul ex: pressing complete virtue in a complete life, he introduces the com view that happiness is rather unstable because it is vulnerable to i fortune, to external hazards that the agent cannot control. Aristotle remarks that if someone is well off for most of his life, but finally suffers disastrous ill fortune and comes to a baxl end, No one counts him happy; this is what happened to Priam at the end of his life (1100a4-9. Here Arisioile seems to raise a serious difficulty for himself. For he had just argued that if we want to be happy, we should cultivate and2 TH Inein practice the virtues (1099b25—1100a4). Most of the £ibics is devoted to an account of the virtues that Aristotle regards as constituents of the happy life. But if he admits that happiness is vulnerable to external hazards, he cannot claim that virtue ensures happiness. How, then, can he advise us to be virtuous if we want to be happy? ‘This is a difficulty within Aristotle's theory. But we may think iti more general difficulty about his whole approach to moral theory. We expect an account of moral virtues to prescribe some degree of inflex- ibility; for we expect an honest and reliable person to stick to his prinei- ples even when he is offered some attractive inducements to violate them, or faces some severe threat for sticking to them, We tend to agree with Satan's method for testing Job's virtue, by plunging him into severe misfortune. Job’s wife was puzzled that Job remained inflexibly Virtuous in disaster: “Are you still unshaken in your integrity? Curse God and die!” (Job 2: 9). Though we may also be puzzled, we expect this integrity from a virtuous person. The Greeks expect it also. It is rather surprising to us, then, that Greek moralists advocate the pursuit of virtue by appealing to the agent’s happiness, when it seems obvious that his virtue does not always promote his happiness. The problem about ill fortune is simply one expression of this general difficulty about virtue and happiness. Aristotle sees the difficulty. He wants to solve it not by brusquely rejecting common beliefs, but by examining them to see what they imply, and how far they really conflict with a reasonable view of happi- hess. After the remark about Priam he adds: “Then shoukl we not count any one else either as happy, as long as he is alive? Should we follow Solon’s advice and see the end?" (1100a11-12).! 1 agree with Aristotle's view that Solon’s advice deserves discussion, and that it illu- minates the problem about happiness and fortune, Before considering Aristotle's views we will find it useful 0 explore Solon’s advice further. 2. Solon’s Problem We learn most about Solon’s advice from Herodotus’ elaborate account of it (1. 30-3). The rich and successful Croesus gives Solon a conducted tour of the palace and treasuries, and then asks Solon to say who he thinks is the most prosperous of human beings. Solon mentions the winner and the runners-up, all utterly obscure people, and Croesus is predictably disappointed, since he could have bought and sold themPermanent Happiness: Aristotle and Solon 3 all, Solon explains that the obscure people he favours were all perma- nently well off, though less rich and splendid than Coresus; we know they were permanently well off because they are dead, and so no anger liable to reversals of fortune. Croesus, however, is alive, and we cannot know that he is permanently happy, because we do not know that he will be spared reversals of fortune. When Solon advises us to se the end of a persons life before decid ing about the person's happiness, we see how he conceives happiness. He refuses to consider the apparently natural possibility that Croesus might be happy at one time and unhappy at another time in his life. He must, then, regard happiness as a conclition of a person's life as a whole. It is reasonable for him to do this, if he concetves happiness as success. For the success that a person reasonably wants anc pursues is not success for a day or two, but his success over his whole lifetime? And that is the sort of thing that, as Solon reasonably observes, you can discover only when you contemplate a person's complete lifetime after it is over. Solon’s conception of happiness was widely shared, It is reflected in Asistotle’s account in the Rhetoric of common views. Aristotle de- scribes happiness as “doing well combined with virtue” or “selfsuffi ciency of intest life with safety” oF “prosperity of possessions and bodies with the power to protect them and use them in action” (1360b14~17). Power and fortune are also parts of happiness because these are the best providers of safety (1360b28-9). It is be- cause we aim at complete anel secure success in life as a whole that we need fortune, and cannot be assured of happiness tll we are dead: for the fortune that is needed for prosperity is unstable and variable (EN 1100b2-7). Not surprisingly, it becomes a Greek commonplace that no one should be called happy until his death.> This shared belief that happiness requir fortune, and fortune is unstable, provokes different reactions; an these set some of the prob- Jems for Aristotle. Since Solon remarks that good and bad fortune ¢ a sensible person might think he needs to be adaptable, so that he can act on reasonable predictions about the future and avoid too serious a loss if things turn out badly. The supremely ad: le Greek is Odys- seus, both in Homer and in the tragedies in which he app On the other hand, many find it hard to admire the astutely flexible person. One prominent type of tragic character refuses to be sensible and adaptable, and apparently harms himself and others by his inflexi- n atect ars.