Aristotle on Lent, Motherhood, and Happiness

I vividly remember encountering Aristotle in my Philosophy 101 class in college, and thinking ‘these ideas sound familiar’. We are revisiting Aristotle again in both of my classes this semester, and last week while I was on the treadmill, reflecting on the season of Lent while reading his discussion of virtue as a mean between extremes, I thought ‘this sounds like Lent!’. 

There is something so Catholic, or universal, about Aristotle’s concept of human nature, for good reason. His ideas were picked up by Aquinas and baptized and became our catechism. For example, Aristotle holds that virtue is a habit that flows from our state of being, and aims towards excellence and away from vice.  Vice is our conception of sin, and virtue is synonymous with a state of grace. So Lent is changing our habits towards virtue. And he understands virtue as the mean between two extremes of vice - the vice of excess (which is why we fast) as well as the vice of scarcity (which is why we increase our almsgiving and prayer). I found myself writing in the margins ‘Lent’ when he wrote that the best way to recalibrate towards the mean is to abstain from something for a period of time. And it’s true – our habits after Easter are different, and we do feel changed. 

But it isn’t just Lent that his wisdom helps us understand. 

What has struck me is how helpful he is in articulating so much of what it means to be human. Rereading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics has been nothing short of a master-class in practical wisdom, a self-help guide that has what so many are searching for in our culture today. They are trying to figure out how to do better: how to live better, parent better, work better, feel better, love better, eat better, rest better. From podcasts to coaching to self-help books, we are hungry to learn, and we want to know. This is because the essential nature of human beings, according to Aristotle’s first line of his Metaphysics, is that “all men by nature desire to know”. In fact, Aristotle held that the purpose of his ethics was practical, and was meant not for theoretical knowledge but for a person to become good. So it is not a surprise that his language and key ideas have trickled down into the self-help realm as well: his main ideas of excellence, virtue, habits, state of being, character, wellness, and developing our potential, or capacities. But understanding his view of human nature ties them all together in a simple and elegant way. 

For starters, he holds it is our nature to aim at happiness. Aristotle begins the Ethics with a definition of happiness, and holds that excellence is aiming at the right end, the right target, and for the human being that target is happiness, or eudaimonia. This translates from eu- which means well, and daimon which means spirit or soul. Think ‘it is well with my soul’. Happiness is our telos, the end for which we are created. It is also our first principle, that which we can base definitions on, it is so essential to our nature. 

When these articles on motherhood crossed my palm, Aristotle’s ideas seemed to illuminate their conversations as well. This piece on training for motherhood like and athlete by Helen Roy and this piece on the gauntlet of motherhood by Lane Scott are both trying to get at the very ideas he lays out so clearly – human nature and the ends it aims at - since they both are grappling with the question of happiness, or more specifically, why mothers struggle to find it today. Could it be that Aristotle helps not only with Lent but motherhood too? He clearly lays out when we are aiming correctly, the result is happiness. And getting clear on what we are aiming for is paramount. So how are we missing the mark in motherhood? 

For starters, we mistakenly define happiness as freedom. 

Aristotle’s definition of happiness isn’t freedom, it is activity of the soul in accordance with virtue. He writes: 

…the function of man is to live a certain kind of life, and this activity implies a rational principle, and the function of a good man is the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed it is performed in accord with the appropriate excellence: if this is the case, then happiness turns out to be an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue. (Nicomachean Ethics, 1098a13)

So happiness is activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and virtue is activity in accordance with right reason. It is a state of being or character we reach through our habits, or repeated activity in accordance with virtue, excellence, right reason. 

What is soul? He uses his framework of substance, form and matter to explain it. Substances are either 1) matter, which he also calls potentiality, 2) form, which he also calls actuality, or essence, or 3) a compound of matter and form. Aristotle defines the soul as a ‘substance in the sense of the form of a natural body having life potentiality within it’. A living thing's soul is its capacity to engage in the activities that are characteristic of its nature. For example, an acorn has the potential to become an oak tree. The actuality of an oak tree is the potential being coming into being, or an acorn having its potentiality activated to become a mature tree. Then it does those things that oak trees do: photosynthesis, creating more acorns, having leaves that are green in the spring and summer and change color in the fall. Things operating according to nature are therapeutic, beautiful, and fill up something in us that is hard to explain. In short, bringing potential being into actual being is always good. Aquinas will pick up on this and maintain that all being is good.

So what are those activities for human beings? We have already seen that the end of activities for humans is eudaimonia. And the word he uses for activity, ergon, is a central idea in Aristotle, and means the function, task or work of a human being. He argues that it consists in the activation of the rational part of the soul in accordance with virtue (Ethics, 1097b22–1098a20). The soul is the essential nature of human beings, and its function is for its potentialities or capacities to become activated in accordance with virtue or excellence. The state of being or character we have when they are activated means our actions will naturally or habitually aim towards happiness. 

But we can see from both of these articles that women are struggling to find happiness. Our human nature is crying out to help us reach some defined excellence, to activate our potentiality, and Scott makes the case we struggle to even govern ourselves. Indeed, she says that self-governance is exactly what makes motherhood hard. 

As the article discusses the gauntlet of motherhood it makes clear that only self-governance can lead us to fulfillment or happiness in motherhood. It is so much easier to rely on outside forces to govern us – grades, sales quotas, promotions, titles, salary, bonuses – than to self-govern. But a mother must look to herself for all such criteria. As Scott writes: 

That total freedom is in some ways the source of the dissatisfaction. The lack of supervisors and peers, the absence of enforced schedules, and the loss of systems and productivity boosters which all working Americans enjoy makes job performance a little problematic, to say the least. Most of the time, no one is watching. No one is cheering. No one is there to keep you honest; and worst of all, no one is there to tell you what ought to be done now vs. later that day vs. next week vs. never. What this means is that there is no system to prevent you from slipping into your worst habits day in, day out.

And your habits are the crux of the issue.

Life at home with small children requires self-governance. One must be free of slavery to lower passions, lower pursuits, character weakness, and laziness in order to do it really well. And almost no one notices when you do it poorly, particularly in the early years.

This language is directly borrowed from the ancient Greeks, for both Plato and Aristotle held that the soul had a lower, animal-like portion, and a higher portion that was immaterial and rational. In Catholic writers like JPII, this becomes an understanding of the soul as free will + reason. Our will is what is doing the aiming, and reason tells us what to aim for. 

I didn’t realize how implicit this idea of happiness and the soul were in my motherhood. Catholics believe our baptism anoints us all as priest, prophet and king. In this last role, we are called to govern ourselves well. What is the way we do this? Habits. They are the crux of the issue. Living a sacramental life is not a cake walk. Motherhood is not easy for anyone. But the requirements of examining our conscience, having a regular prayer life, going to Church on Sundays and Holy Days, observing Lent, offering up suffering – these develop in us a state of being that aims at a highest good: union with God, sainthood, or Heaven, i.e. happiness. Through these habits, the slings and arrows of motherhood become the refiner’s fire. They help us develop virtue or are made easier by our state of being in accord with virtue. (Lest you think I am being Pollyanna about motherhood, as I write this, my family of eight is on our February vacation from school and passing around strep for the second time this winter instead of skiing. Last year we had it three times.)

All of this becomes the system that prevents you from slipping into your worst habits. 

Helen Roy intuits all this in her piece about training for motherhood the way an athlete trains. She uses the best parallel to Aristotle’s state of the soul – the state of the body. What athletes do to the body – activate capacities in accordance with excellence – so those who are aiming at happiness in accordance with virtue do for the soul. The parallel to athletes is apropos to mothers, because the short-term pain and discomfort are traded for the long-term aim.  

And getting clear on this aim is the key to happiness for Aristotle. After reading Scotts article, it is clear it is essential for mothers to aim at happiness and develop virtue. It is also clear that what is plaguing all of us is undeveloped potential. For our culture tells us the aim of happiness is freedom to find self-fulfillment or self-actualization. But when we have this freedom, we are miserable. What gives? The answer is that while the freedom to find our own actualization is part of the path to happiness, it is lacking half of the equation: activity of the soul in accordance with virtue or right reason. The idea of self-actualization is touted as wisdom from everyone from Shonda Rhimes to Gwenyth Paltrow, but as this article shows, it is an illusion in a world where people are aiming at the self, and all its desires, instead of virtue.

For those who have determined that happiness is more about seeking pleasure, honors, and worldly praise and about avoiding pain and sacrifice, a mother’s job seems mutually exclusive to happiness. There is a road block for the modern mind to understand redemptive suffering and virtue ethics. It sounds so outdated and boring for those who reject the idea of a moral ethics with a highest good or anything that smacks of a moral imposition. Who are they to tell me what to do?

But Aristotle isn’t telling you what to do, he is telling you what human nature is, and what we need to do to be happy. And we can see from both of these articles, absolute freedom doesn’t make us happy. We are wired for something that can help us activate our potential. As we can see from the thousands of self-help books, humans want to know how to do better. People are striving to develop their potential for excellence, which equals happiness for Aristotle, and this speaks volumes about his claim that it is our nature as humans to aim for this. For most, this is done by looking to outside measures or agents that act on us, such as a job, boss, supervisor, teacher, or coach, or pleasures or honors or riches. For stay at home moms, we have to look to the source of goodness, virtue, and happiness, the activation of all potentialities, which is for Aristotle the perfection of all being, or God. When we aim at Him, and ask him to help us activate our potential, happiness follows. Just like an acorn becomes and oak tree.  

There is a paradox in motherhood: if you find motherhood meaningless, you resent the pain and sacrifice. But if you find meaning in your motherhood, you understand the pain and sacrifice leads to more growth, that it activates the potential for virtue, you will have happiness, and you will have more meaning. 

It doesn’t seem like we as a culture are likely to embrace Aristotle’s idea of happiness, or the soul which needs our freedom to work with our reason to reach happiness by determining what is good, or excellent, as a whole. But maybe we can be grateful for Lent, for the ways it shapes our habits and state of being to work towards the highest good – union with God – and in the process fills our lives with meaning and purpose and joy. Then we can share that with others. Next to aiming for happiness, being social and desiring friendship are the most fundamental aspects of our nature. Aristotle seems to precede Christ’s revelation that it is only in the virtue of self-gift that we can truly find ourselves and happiness. What will happen if we aim for that this Lent?