ABSTRACT
Aristotle begins Nicomachean Ethics with this statement: "Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good". Aristotle's conclusion that happiness meets both criteria is supported by reflecting on people's ordinary attitudes about happiness. Regarding the first criterion, it does seem wrong to say that someone could be seeking happiness instrumentally; it is difficult to understand how someone could want happiness for any reason other than its own intrinsic properties. People's ordinary use of happiness also permits them to talk about the happy baby or child, yet this would be impossible if we identify happiness with virtue, for babies and even children do not yet have the mental capacities necessary for achieving moral or intellectual virtue. Furthermore, identifying happiness with virtue appears to misrepresent ordinary people's motivations and behavior. Modern society is replete with examples of happy immoralists, people who knowingly break the moral law and are unaffected by it.
