The Nicomachean Ethics is the name normally given to Aristotle's best-known work on ethics. In his Nicomachean Ethics, the Greek philosopher Aristotle stated that the contemplative life consists of the soul's participation in the eternal through a union between the soul's rational faculty and the nous that imparts intelligibility to the cosmos. The goal of the Ethics is to determine how best to achieve happiness. This study is necessarily imprecise, since so much depends on particular circumstances. Happiness depends on living in accordance with appropriate virtues. Virtue is a disposition rather than an activity.