The moment or the whole life
On the axis: The highest good · the course of a life
Is a life worth the sum of its good moments, or its overall shape, so that a life rising would be worth more than one declining, at equal total pleasure?
Justification
If every action aims at an end, and ends link up as means, then, on pain of infinite regress, there must be a final end willed for its own sake and never for the sake of anything else: this self-sufficient good is . What it consists in is settled by the function argument (ergon): as the flute-player has his excellence, the human has his own, the activity of the soul's rational part carried out in accordance with virtue. Happiness is therefore neither pleasure, nor honour, nor wealth, but an excellent activity unfolded over a whole life, whose highest form is contemplation.
The good of man is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are several virtues, in accordance with the best and most complete.Nicomachean Ethics, I.7 (1098a)
Nicomachean Ethics, I.7 (1097b) · Nicomachean Ethics, X.7
Anchors: Aristotle · Velleman