ARISTOTELIAN CONCEPT OF EUDAIMONIA

ARISTOTELIAN CONCEPT OF EUDAIMONIA

Introduction
Eudaimonia is a state variously translated from Greek as 'well-being', 'happiness', 'blessedness', and in the context of virtue ethics, 'human flourishing'. Eudaimonia in this sense is not a subjective, but an objective, state. It characterizes the well-lived life, irrespective of the emotional state of the person experiencing it. According to Aristotle, the most prominent exponent of eudaimonia is the proper goal of human life. It consists of exercising the characteristic human quality, reason as the soul's most proper and nourishing activity. “Aristotle, like Plato before him, argued that the pursuit of eudaimonia was an activity that could only properly be exercised in the characteristic human community.”
Aristotle categorized the virtues as moral and intellectual. Aristotle identified nine intellectual virtues, the most important of which was wisdom; sophia (theoretical wisdom) and phronesis (practical wisdom). The other eight moral virtues included prudence, justice, fortitude, courage, liberality, magnificence, magnanimity, and temperance. Aristotle argued that each of the moral virtues was a mean Golden Mean between two corresponding vices.
“The causal factors relevant to living well, to eudaimonia, are all, they claim, within the agent’s firm grasp; external uncontrolled happiness can neither significantly enhance nor significantly diminish good living.” Eudaimonia is used to refer to the life that is most desirable or satisfying. Therefore, it's the objective of each person, generally translated into English as "happiness" or "well being".
The 'Father of Eudaimonia' was Aristotle. He introduced and famously explored the concept in the Nicomachean Ethics, where he argued that all 'good' acts performed by someone would lead to their greater well-being. His main argument for this rested on the assumption that everything in the world had an end/purpose. For example, a knife is made for the purpose of cutting things and as such the best use of it is the purpose for which it was made (i.e. for cutting things), rather than say digging a hole in the ground, or turning a screw in the wall.
One of the ways Aristotle's moral theory has been put into practice, is found in the concept of natural moral law. This is the idea that the 'right' thing to do is what it is natural for something to do. The Catholic Church has particularly adopted this way of looking at the moral issue of abortion, saying that it is not natural to stop a pregnancy, and as such doing so is morally wrong.
In the same way, Aristotle argued that humans have a telos, and as such the best life they can live is one where everything they do is directed towards fulfilling it. As such, fulfilling their 'telos' would lead people to adopt certain attitudes and behaviors in order to do so, which were understood as the 'virtues' .All this meant that the desire to be successful in life or to do what one was meant to do, and as such achieve eudaimonia, led people to become 'good' people.

Eudaimonia as an End in Itself

Discussing who the “happy man” is, Aristotle identifies 3 popular views of the nature of life. 1) Life is pleasure; 2) Life is honor; 3) Life is making money. But none of them are according to virtue, either , because it doesn't consider its sources and impacts or because it depends on an external recognition. Therefore, the happy life should be of a fourth nature, a contemplative life, and an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.



Eudaimonia is not a State But an Activity
Eudaimonia is not a state or a feeling of amusement. That's because it's not short-lived, it's not external to ourselves and its dependent on how we do what we do. It's our virtues, which differ us from other living beings. It comprises both moral and intellectual excellence, as well as both practical and theoretical wisdom. The consistent practice of these virtues is Eudaimonia.

Not Duty nor Happiness but Eudaimonia

Modern ethical debate tends to be about exploring what makes an action moral. For instance, Immanuel Kant argued that moral activity was about doing our 'duty', whereas Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill believed it was about doing that which benefited the greatest number of people. This meant that for Kant acting in the right way occurred when one did their duty, whereas for Bentham and Mill it was when we maximized the amount of pleasure to others through our actions.
However, for Aristotle eudaimonia was not to be sought for any particular reason, but was an end in itself. In other words, we should not desire eudaimonia because it is our duty to seek it, or in order to increase the amount of happiness in the world. If we wanted to achieve eudaimonia in order to be happy for example, then 'happiness' would be the 'end', not eudaimonia. For Aristotle, the desire to achieve eudaimonia is a defining characteristic of what it means to be human. In other words, wanting to be successful is a defining aspect of being human. We do not see people putting a lot of time and effort into things they believe they will fail at or which they believe will make them unhappy. For everyone, no matter whom they are or where they live, seek to develop those skills, qualities, or obtain certain things and even get to know people that will enable them to live successful, prosperous, happy and contented lives. This is why Aristotle believed eudaimonia was the telos of human life, for it can be seen to affect all of our choices and decisions.

Eudaimonia and Modern Moral Philosophy

Interest in the concept of eudaimonia and ancient ethical theory more generally has enjoyed a tremendous revival in the twentieth century. This is largely due to the work of Elizabeth Anscombe. In her article "Modern Moral Philosophy," Anscombe argued that duty based conceptions of morality are conceptually incoherent for they are based on the idea of a "law without a lawgiver." The point is that a system of morality conceived along the lines of the Ten Commandments, as a system of rules for action, depends on someone having actually made these rules. However, in a modern climate, which is unwilling to accept that morality depends on God in this way, the rule-based conception of morality is stripped of its metaphysical foundation. Anscombe recommends a return the eudemonistic ethical theories of the ancients, particularly Aristotle, which ground morality in the interests and well being of human moral agents, and can do so without appealing to any questionable metaphysics.

Is Eudaimonia Vulnerable?

The good condition theorist argue that eudaimonia is vulnerable because it consists simply in having a good ethical state or condition and because this condition is itself stable even under the direst circumstances. But Aristotle argues that states of character are vulnerable to external influences. Or he would argue that good states are not by themselves sufficient for good living. “Eudaimonia requires actual activity for its completion, and second, that good human activity can be disrupted or decisively impeded by various forms of luck.”
“We agree, Aristotle says, that our end is eudaimonia; but we agree on just about nothing concerning it, except the name. One further agreement, however, emerging near the beginning of the Nichomachean Ethics: it concerns the connection of eudaimonia its activity.” So we can see from the start that the opponent who makes the good life consists in a non-active state or condition, removing it altogether from its realization in activity, is going against beliefs of ours that are as broadly shared as any ever brought forward by Aristotle in the ethical works.

Conclusion

Although eudaimonia was first popularized by Aristotle, it now belongs to the tradition of virtue theories generally. For the virtue theorist, eudaimonia describes that state achieved by the person who lives the proper human life, an outcome that can be reached by practicing the virtues. A virtue is a habit or quality that allows the bearer to succeed at his, her, or its purpose. The virtue of a knife, for example, is sharpness; among the virtues of a racehorse is speed. Thus to identify the virtues for human beings, one must have an account of what the human purpose is.
Bibliograhpy
1. Nussbaum, Martha C. The Fragility of Goodness:Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy.Cambridge University Press: Cambrige,1986.