Aristotle's Introduction to the Problem of Happiness: On Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics

The study of Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics is useful today in part because it deals with a question—the nature of human happiness—whose relevance is obvious. But in dealing with that question, Book I compels us to raise difficulties for ourselves that, far from being obvious, are in danger of being forgotten. Chief among these difficulties are, first, the true character of our hope for happiness and, ultimately, the necessity of there being a kind of divine providence if that hope is to be realized. Inasmuch as we still long for happiness, we must still undergo the pull of that necessity, however distant it may appear to us to be. In bringing out our deepest concern in this way, the study of the first book of the Ethics also prepares us to become serious students of Aristotle's “philosophy of human matters” as a whole, which is concerned with the reality of providence because it is concerned with the possibility of philosophy as a way of life.