              The suggestion that only excellently executed or virtuously performed rational activity constitutes human happiness provides the impetus for Aristotle’s virtue ethics. Strikingly, first, he insists that the good life is a life of activity; no state suffices, since we are commended and praised for living good lives, and we are rightly commended or praised only for things we (do) (EN 1105b20–1106a13). Further, given that we must not only act, but act excellently or virtuously, it falls to the ethical theorist to determine what virtue or excellence consists in with respect to the individual human virtues, including, for instance, courage and practical intelligence. This is why so much of Aristotle’s ethical writing is given over to an investigation of virtue, both in general and in particular, and extending to both practical and theoretical forms.