Understanding happiness in Greek sense of Eudaimonia

The beginning of thought is in disagreement—not only with others but also with ourselves.--Eric Hoffler

Happiness or Eudaimonia From the Greek, eu (good) and daimon (demon), albeit the nice kind that has the job of looking after people (Westerners would say ‘guardian angel’, perhaps). The word is sometimes shorthanded to ‘happiness’, but this loses its particular significance, which is that the happiness here is of the whole, and not merely that transient, ‘illusory’ happiness obtainable, for example, through the senses.

The Nicomachean Ethics is one of the most influential books of moral philosophy, including accounts of what the Greeks considered to be the great virtues, and Aristotle’s great-souled man, who speaks with a deep voice and level utterance, and who is not unduly modest either, as well as reminding us wisely that ‘without friends, no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods’. The main idea in Aristotle’s ethics is that the proper end of mankind is the pursuit of Eudaimonia, which is Greek for a very particular kind of ‘happiness’.

Fom the common beliefs (endoxa) concerning which lives are worth living, Aristotle argued that eudaimonia requires that we realize human excellences of character (ethos) and of intellect (wisdom, or phronesis).

For Aristotle, though virtue is typically pleasant, pleasure is not the aim of virtue. Pleasure is the “bloom on the rose” of virtuous activity; it should not be taken to be our reason for cultivating the virtues and it would not be valuable were it not for the value of the activity.

Eudaimonia differs from some now mainstream understandings of happiness or well-being in three important ways. First, eudaimonia represents an all-encompassing goal of life as opposed to one goal among many that a human life might have

Second, eudaimonia is much less subjective and less psychological than current notions of happiness or well-being. This is so in two senses. Subjective experiences, such as pleasure and satisfaction, though they may matter for eudaimonia, are not typically the only things that matter

Third, the ancient Greeks tended to agree that eudaimonia is attributed to a person’s life as a whole, not to some distinct part of it. It is difficult to understand the ancient Greeks’ claims that virtue is necessary for eudaimonia without understanding this point.

A single virtuous act may cause a person some pain or require some sacrifice, but the point is that a life of virtue overall is better for you than the life of vice. Our current conception of happiness as a psychological state allows for significant fluctuations of happiness within a person’s life; eudaimonia is not volatile in this way.

According to Aristotle’s so-called “function argument,” the function of a human being is to live a certain kind of life, namely, a life of activity guided by reason. The ethical virtues (ethike arête) on this view just are those excellences of character that equip a human being for such a life by ensuring that they relate to the various domains of action and feeling in a rational way. In various domains of action and feeling, Aristotle isolates a settled way of relating to that domain that is neither excessive nor deficient. Aristotle refers to this state as the middle point, or mean, between the two extremes (hence, Aristotle’s “doctrine of the mean” for the virtues). For example, Aristotle begins his discussion of the specific ethical virtues by examining courage (andreia, literally “manliness”) as the reasonable feeling and expression of fear in response to fearful situations. Courage contrasts with its extreme of excess, the vice of rashness and its extreme of deficiency, the vice of cowardice. The remaining virtues of character share this triadic form, they are: moderation (sophrosune; literally “soundness of mind”); open-handedness (eleutheriotes); munificence (megaloprepeia); greatness of soul (megalopsuchia); a nameless virtue concerning honor; mildness (praotes); a nameless virtue concerning pleasing and paining others; a nameless virtue concerning truthfulness in self-presentation; wit (eutrapelia); and justice. Exercising the virtues is good for us because we are rational creatures who flourish when we express our rational nature.




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