Aristotle�s first argument from his text, On Happiness and Morality, is that a city is comprised of a number of villages that form a complete community. Aristotle sees the city as being very much self-sufficient, and, �[coming] into being for the sake of living, but [remaining] in being for the sake of living well.� This is the natural end of the previous communities, as �something�s nature � is the character it has when its coming to be is complete.� Aristotle qualifies the city as a natural form, and human beings as thus naturally political creatures. All animals perceive, and are able to signify pleasure and pain, but other animals are separated from human beings by a lacking in political ability, since, �a human being is the only animal with rational discourse.� Rational discourse is what allows humanity to communicate what is appropriate for a particular purpose, perceive good and evil, just and unjust, and, �it is community in these that produces a household and a city.�
This is Aristotle�s view; the city is a complete and self-sufficient end, natural to the community, and ultimately the source of human happiness. Similarly, because no addition can make it a more valuable good, happiness is �something complete and self-sufficient, since it is the end of the things pursued in action.� A non-human animal then, for Aristotle, ends at sensory perception, which is, �apparently shared, with horse, ox and every animal.� Human beings exist above this level on �some sort of life of action of the
Aristotle�s view of the human animal has been a common one among philosophers until only recently. It is a marked form of speciesism that mars the greater bodies of philosophical thought as they are absorbed by contemporary minds. By viewing human beings as superior to all other species of animal, human philosophy has encouraged the increased industrialization of livestock farming, while contaminating, with nuclear, biological, and industrial waste, natural environments that are home to a myriad of diverse animal life forms. The self-sufficiency of Aristotle�s cities is now being tested, and new philosophical and political systems have shaped according to these developments. J. S. Mill�s paper on utilitarianism summarizes moral shifts in acting for happiness� sake: �The multiplication of happiness is, according to the utilitarian ethics, the object of virtue.�
Though utilitarianism is a moral philosophy before it is a political one, through the application of utilitarianism on the political state of the city, the idea of living well is extended to all humankind. Mill writes of the moral system intending to be, �secured to all mankind; and not to them only, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation.� Allowing for a state of happiness to be comprehended by more than just the human species is a development in moral and political philosophy neglected by Aristotle in his view of human ends. It is not difficult to observe humanlike behaviour in many animal species; maternal displays are common in all mammals, while many birds nest and mate for life, exhibiting parental behaviour not unlike the human process of reproduction. The alienation that humanity continues to perpetuate between itself and the rest of the community of life seems rooted in our inability to communicate complex dreams interspecially, as we can among our kin. A non-speciesim, utilitarian approach to viewing human patterns in political organization aims for having the greatest amount of pleasure for the greatest number of species possible,
The theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded�namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things � are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.
While utilitarianism works to make human kind more politically aware of their neighbours, and the species long maintained as profitable resources, it has not helped to create more physical and social change regarding how our cities allow integration of other animal species. This is largely because the moral system was not established to function in this way. It is difficult to imagine a city state that does not restrict species from existing without interference, but it is not improbable given the integrated state of the larger web of life. The key to understanding the idea of living well and happy in a modified social city state is given with Immanuel Kant�s way of perceiving happiness.
Kant sees happiness as something determined by conditions not yet established. His view of happiness is not that of an end, but that it is, �the cultivation of reason, which is requisite for the first and unconditioned purpose, may in many ways restrict � the attainment of the second purpose, viz., happiness, which is always conditioned.� The human animal is inherently able to feel happiness to some degree, in any situation, over an extended period of time, because happiness is itself conditional to experience, and reliant on the context of the organism�s lifetime. Kant believes that happiness cannot be easily attained through the use of human reason. Kant explains that, �if [a] being's preservation, welfare, or in a word its happiness, [is] the real end of nature in the case of a being having reason and will ... the purpose in question [may be] attained much more certainly by instinct than it ever can be by reason.�
Aristotle saw the city as a means of creating a good life for the living generation, while securing a safe environment, free from disease and predation for the future ones; but this view of the city is not a self-sufficient one. The continued imbalance between human civilization and the greater ecosystem persists in causing species� extinctions, unethical livestock farming practices, and horrific natural disasters that are rooted in the idea that humanity is intrinsically superior. Kant�s view of happiness being a human condition subject to processes outside of reasoning, frees it from politics. Kant�s happiness is one that will be experienced irrespective of the manner in which the city organizes itself.
The natural world is the greatest model of self-sustaining organization that we can study, and in it we find a remarkable, reciprocal intelligence functioning in a manner that our cities do not. We are unable to convince other species to be willing to take part in the acquisition of resources for profit; we are not easily persuaded that another species may have a philosophy of self-sufficiency superior to Aristotle�s. Living well and living happy are not absent from a future built on interspecies utilitarianism, so if we are indeed gifted with reason and politics, let us govern a new world.
Works Cited
Aristotle. An Account of Happiness. In Aristotle: Selections, edited by Terence Irwin and Gail Fine. Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing, 1995.
Aristotle. On Happiness and Morality. In Politics, edited by Terence Irwin and Gail Fine. n.d.
Kant, Immanuel. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. James W. Ellington. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993.
Mill, John S. Utilitarianism. London: ElecBook, 2001.
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