What is the meaning of happiness? Is the quest for happiness the true purpose of our lives? In Made for Happiness, Jean Vanier considers these questions by examining Aristotle’s best-known works in order to map a possible road to happiness.

Vanier focuses on Aristotle’s belief that a desire for happiness is an innate human drive and involves a virtuous intellectual and spiritual quest. Of particular relevance to contemporary discourse is Aristotle’s emphasis on authenticity in life and relationships and his theory of true morality based on absolute freedom of choice – an idea developed later in 20th-century existentialist thought. The reader is struck by the relevance of Aristotle’s thought to subsequent Western philosophy and psychology.

But Vanier’s parallels to the contemporary social world occasionally feel forced and overly didactic in tone. And while Vanier endorses the rational search for truth and integrity, a search sorely lacking in our times, he finds an overall lack of compassion in Aristotle’s philosophy. This could have something to do with the fact that Vanier views the world from an explicitly religious position. Although later Christian doctrine has deliberately incorporated some of Aristotle’s principles, his is not a religion-based ideology and it should not be seen in that light.

Made for Happiness often reads like a beginner’s primer on Aristotle, but Vanier does not fall into the trap of radically simplifying the material. He provides a solid guide to the fundamentals of Aristotle’s ethics for anyone interested in viewing our everyday existence from a broader moral and spiritual vantage point.