The final chapters of Aristotle's Nichomachaen Ethics take a surprising turn. Throughout the Ethics we learn that a good human life requires intellectual and moral virtue. The key to happiness is found in virtue because courage, temperance, justice, friendship, and the like, allow us to acquire the real goods we need to fulfill potentials. A life of pleasure may be enjoyable in the short term but practical wisdom and the golden mean win out in the end. Virtue is good for the individual and good for the polis.

At the end of the Ethics, Aristotle seems to tell a different story: True happiness, he claims, is found in contemplation. Reason is the foundation of virtue, which enables us to navigate the everyday world. But reason can also lead us to another realm. It is possible to transcend the world of needs, material goods, and practical problems and enter the world of forms – the world of knowledge, truth, perfection, and God. Contemplation is the means by which we can travel to the “ultimate concerns.” Now, Aristotle returns us to his mentor, to Plato.