Aristotle's eudaimonia and two conceptions of happiness
Abstract
Are you happy? This question is asked of people by friends, parents and psychiatrists alike. What
happiness consists of for each person seems, at first glance, to be entirely subjective in that is it up
to each individual person to define what the happy-making ingredients of her life are.
This dissertation centrally involves an interpretation of Aristotle’s eudaimonia, often
translated as ‘happiness’. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is an inquiry into the chief good for human
beings, and according to Aristotle everyone agrees that this chief good is ‘happiness’, however there
is major disagreement about what ‘happiness’ consists of.
What follows critically interprets Aristotle’s eudaimonia through a close reading of his
arguments. Once Aristotle’s eudaimonia is explicated, it is used to question the supposedly
subjective conception of happiness that the happiness literature argues is pervasive. Finally,
Aristotle’s eudaimonia is defended as a theory of well-being against a charge of perfectionism. It is
argued that Aristotle’s eudaimonia commits its adherents to maximising virtuous activity at all
times, that is, to perfect themselves. It is this interpretation of Aristotle that seeks to undermine
eudaimonia as a plausible theory of well-being, and I end this dissertation by providing a response to
the objection from perfectionism.
This project attempts, fundamentally, to show that Aristotle’s eudaimonia is not simply an
intellectual curiosity: studying eudaimonia can help change the way we live our lives, and for the
better.
Type
Thesis, MPhil Master of Philosophy
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