What is success? Is success worth striving for? In the modern day we might have a recognition that there is success to be had in particular areas of our life; we might say that our business has become a success if it is productive or has made a lot of money. We might say that our relationships are successful if they’re full of love and are long lasting. In a war or in sports we might say that one side is successful if it has one victory over the other. In the context of an entire life, are all of these examples of true success? Is true success a combination of all of these? Or is it something else?
Aristotle’s approach to understanding success involves looking at it over the course of an entire lifetime and he might ask how your entire life can be a success and how you can live successfully, day to day, whilst you strive to attain this lifelong goal. Success as Aristotle defines it is foremost the highest and best possible goal and thing that we can achieve and that we can direct our lives towards.
And so, to unpack this idea of success in Aristotle, let’s begin by unpacking the definition a bit more by understanding why it is the highest goal that we can have.
If we could consider or posit a perfect goal - a highest objective – it would make sense that we would aim all of our skills towards achieving it. If there was nothing better to aim at, why would we waste our time or skills doing anything else? This goal is what success is.
Now, we can start by recognising that life needs to be lived with some goal in mind. We cannot simply expect that we will have no need or desire to do anything at all and so even the most aimless person in the world cannot coast along completely with no goals at all. And so, if we must have goals, how are they organised? Goals are organised in a hierarchy in which some goals are secondary to more important ones. For example, if your only goal in life were to stay alive, this requires you to eat which, in turn, might require you to go to the kitchen to get some food. In this way, the goals of going to the kitchen and to eat food are secondary to the goal of staying alive, without which there would be no need to get up or do anything. Interestingly, Aristotle adds more detail when he explains that we actually have different types of goals: we either pursue a particular goal or we purse the state of being or the means by which that goal can be attained. This is quite simple if we return to the example. And so, a particular goal that we might pursue would be the goal of getting food, but we might also pursue being in a state that allows us to get the food in the first place. After all, if we were paralysed or otherwise unable to get to the kitchen, we would not be able to get our food. As another example, a fighter might pursue a goal such as winning a fight, or they could pursue a state; they would train and exercise in order to make sure that they were in the state of being a good fighter so that they could win the fight when the time came.
Let’s get back to why success is the best goal that we can aim for. Aristotle argues that a goal is perfect when it is worth pursuing purely for its own sake and not for the sake of something else. This follows from what has just been said. If we pursue our goals for the sake of goals that are more important, there must be a regress- a chain of goals in which we do something for the sake of something else, for the sake of something else until we find the thing that we are really doing everything else for and that thing is so worthwhile that we do it just because it alone is valuable and not because it is valuable for something else. We can follow from this argument that such a goal must exist and “success” is simply the name that Aristotle gives to it – success is the perfect goal that we pursue for its own sake and that all other goals are, at best, secondary to. Moreover, we can also see why there can only be one perfect goal and that nothing can be equal to success. If there were a second perfect goal, the first goal would lack the second and vis-versa. Success is supposed to “make life lack in nothing” and contain everything else worthwhile within it. However, if there was another thing just as good as success and we aimed at that instead, success would not include that other valuable thing or, likewise, that other valuable thing would not include success and so success must be the only one and true perfect goal.
Okay, so if it’s that important, how would Aristotle advise us on how to achieve success or how to live successfully? Well, there are a number of factors at play. Living successfully involves virtue, it involves the right activities, it involves rationality and it even involves a bit of luck. These elements are connected too.
Let’s start with virtue and doing the right thing. First of all, success itself is not the same as virtue and virtue is a lesser goal that can only aid success if it is acted upon. We could imagine someone who is very virtuous; perhaps they are brave and strong and wise with all of the right intentions, but if they never act upon any of those things, they will be no closer to success. If they do however, they will be. Of course, to give a full picture of the effect that virtue has on success requires a more detailed explanation of what the virtues are, how they relate to each other and how they relate to our actions, which won’t be visited here but at least we can get an outline for now.
Anyway, Aristotle also argues that making our lives a success requires that we make sure that our lives consist of successful activities. We can imagine this if we can imagine breaking our lives down into every decision or action that we might ever have to face. Now, we can imagine that if someone, from birth, made every single decision and action into a success, right up until they died, we would say that that person had lived successfully. Now, this might raise a big red flag: does success require that we are perfect and flawless? To some degree it seems so, but only if we are to attain perfect success which, in fairness, seems like a stretch. Then again, just because perfect success (perhaps) cannot be attained would not mean that Aristotle’s advice falls flat. Perhaps success is something that can be approached – perhaps a life can be more or less successful depending on how we do what we do in life. Consider the analogy of health: perhaps there has never been a person who has been in perfect health but that does not mean that people cannot become more or less healthy if they make particular decisions.
So then, how are we to have a life full of successful activities (or at least, as many as possible)? Well, this connects back to virtue because it is our virtues that ensure that our activities are of the highest calibre. Do you need to fight? Well the quality of your fighting will depend on how brave and strong you are. Do you need to teach? It would be best if you are patient and wise. These are simplified examples but I hope that they convey the point and this is not to say that virtue alone will lead to success, but without it, success will certainly elude us.
What about reason? Here Aristotle makes an appeal to human nature and argues that we are – by nature – creatures who are directed by a rational soul. Therefore, the function of rationality is that it makes us live well because by living in a rational way we are living in accordance with our nature. Aristotle ties this to virtue by arguing that it is the best virtues of our rational souls that guide what we do and guide how we live in a rational way. Again, to give this point justice requires a more in-depth account of what Aristotle means by rationality and the role that it plays which is a large part of Aristotle’s philosophy and something that won’t be met in detail here. Nonetheless, the conclusion from all of this is that success in life is therefore living one’s whole life (or as much of it as possible) in a rational way, whilst under the guidance of the best virtues of the rational soul which, in turn allows us to carry out excellent, virtuous and successful activities which come together to make that successful life. Picture for example someone who lives according to their reason, who has all of the right virtues and intentions... Aristotle would argue that whatever situations that person is faced with, whatever decisions that person must make and whatever that person must do, they would be the best equipped to make the best of those situations and do the right thing. Such a person would be brave when they need to be brave, calm when they need to be calm, wise when they need to be wise and so on, always rational and, as a result would always do the right thing.
The final factor in a successful life is luck, and little is made of it compared to the other factors but it is still important. Aristotle seems to recognise that we’re all dealt different hands in life and different capacities effect peoples’ abilities to do what needs to be done to be successful. What if, for example, you need to be strong but are born with a particular disorder that makes you very weak? Or what if you require a certain amount of training or support but are not in the kind of society that makes it possible. Aristotle does not offer any kind of magical panacea against misfortune and recognises that in some cases it really does reduce the likelihood of success. He does however use this point to venerate virtue because if someone has well developed virtue, they will be better equipped to overcome misfortune. You might lose your house and all of your money one day, but if you are sufficiently wise, brave, strong and patient you might be able to learn the right lessons from that experience and develop your life into a success once again. Aristotle also notes that too much luck can also be a bad thing. It can stifle growth and development. For example, if someone is born into a life which is simply too comfortable in which nothing is really needed from them to do anything, then this could mean that they never have a need to develop their character or their virtues and so would be unable to achieve certain degrees of success.
Finally, it is worth asking what role pleasure plays in Aristotle’s picture of success because it might be a common assumption that the primary goal of our lives is to enjoy them as much as possible. In light of this, it is worth stressing that Aristotle does not argue that pleasure is the measure of success – we cannot say that a life was successful simply because it was enjoyable or that we are being successful simply because we enjoy what we are doing. Nevertheless, that’s also not to say that a successful life – according to Aristotle – is not enjoyable. In fact, success is defined as the most satisfying possible achievement. Now, that might seem like a contradiction but the distinction comes back to the point about goals. The thing is, pleasure is only a secondary contributor to success which is the highest goal but that means that pleasure cannot be the highest goal itself. Instead, a successful life will involve pleasure because if you have virtue you will find it satisfying to live up to your ideals. If someone recognises which things are truly good and right and worth pursuing and finds it in themselves to do those things well, they will take pleasure in that. We could for example imagine that someone recognises that it is right to stand up to tyranny, even if doing so might not be exactly fun. Then again, if such a person also finds that they have the strength and courage to stand up to tyranny and are actually involved in the fight for good, the recognition of this will provide them a certain amount of pleasure – a level of satisfaction that comes from recognising that they are doing the right thing.
And so, to summarise: Aristotle defines success as the highest possible goal that you can have in life and, after all, you do need a goal. This is because all goals reveal a hierarchy in which some things are done for the sake of other things that are more valuable and so we can follow this line of reasoning to conclude that there must be one overarching goal which is the most valuable of all and should be pursued for its own sake. Once we recognise this goal and aim for success, we achieve it by living a life of entirely excellent activity in which we follow our nature as rational creatures, guided by and using our virtues to make the most of every situation that comes our way so that we might always make the best decisions and actions, even if all of this does depend on a certain degree of luck, but not too much. And, in the end, because success is measured over a lifetime, we cannot conclude whether our own lives or the lives of anyone else have been successful until the very end. The degree of success we attain by our end is seldom likely to be perfect, but, according to Aristotle, there are ways of ensuring that we live lives that are, overall, as successful as they possibly can be.
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