Regis Masters in Liberal Studies
Notes on Aristotle
Eudamonia Literally 'having a good guardian spirit', Ross and Irwin translate it as "happiness" but this is misleading. Aristotle provides a synonym "living well and doing well" i.e. a good life. Happiness can be a temporary state of euphoria. Eudamonia in common Greek usage cannot. Eudamonia is long-term - usually one's whole life. When we ask, 'are you happy in your job' you could answer, 'yes I am perfectly contented in it - I'm not particularly good at it but it satisfies me'. This cannot be true of eudamonia. The Greek word connotes success and acheivement and requires more than contentment and satisfaction. Also, the same question cannot be asked about eudamonia anyway, for one cannot be eudaimōn in one respect (e.g. one's job) while not being eudimōn in another (say, one's marriage). One is either eudaimōn or not, absolutely. Eudamonia, then, connotes overall success and prosperity and achievement, though it also connotes something that we might call happiness. For a life made miserable by psychological tensions, or by an inability to relate to other people, would not be eudamōn, no matter how successful it was in other ways. [Bostock, 2000, pg. 11]
C.C.W. Taylor in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy says it is the state of having an objectively desirable life, universally agreed by ancient philosophical theory and popular thought to be the supreme human good. This objective character distinguishes it from the modern concept of happiness, i.e. of a subjectively satisfactory life. Much ancient theory concerns the question of what constitutes the good life, e.g. whether virtue is sufficient for it, as Socrates and the Stoics held, or whether external goods such as good fortune are also necessary, as Aristotle maintained. Immoralists such as Thrasymachus (in Plato's Republic) sought to discredit morality by arguing that it prevents the achievement of eudaimonia, while its defenders (including Plato) argued that it is necessary and/or sufficient. The Kantian conception of morality binding on rational beings independently of their well-being was absent from Greek thought.
logos is a word of many meanings. Ross usually translates it as 'principle' or 'rational principle' or rule. While it can have this meaning, current thinking is that this is not what Aristotle has in mind but rather 'reason' would be a better translation. Rosses prefered rendering arises in part, because Ross himself was an "intuitionist" in ethics believing that the basis of ethics is our intuition of general rules and principles. But there is no reason to suppose that Aristotle was an intuitionist in this sense and for him the word is much more closely associated with arguing, inferring, giving reasons and so forth. [Bostock]
aretē Ross translates consistently as 'virtue', Urmson's revision occasionally replaces with excellence) the Greek term in fact signifies excellence or goodness, i.e. a quality the possession of which either constitutes the possessor as, or causes it to be, a good instance of its kind. Thus sharpness is an aretē of a knife, strength an aretē of a boxer, etc. Since in order to be a good instance of its kind an object normally has to possess several excellences, the term may designate each of those excellences severally or the possession of them all together - overall or total excellence.
In English we think of virtue as just moral virtue but aretē includes other excellences such as intellectual as well.
Much Greek ethical theory is concerned with the investigation of the nature of human excellence overall, and of human excellences severally; the possession of the excellences is constitutive of being a good human being, i.e. of achieving a good human life.
enkrates/akrates Ross and Irwin translate as continent and incontinent. Better to think of as self-control and lack of self-control
reason versus desire When talking about parts of the soul I13 Aristotle talks about conflicts of the soul.
Contrast with Hume. For Hume, reason is entirely distinct from what he calls, 'passion', a word he uses widely to cover any kind of desire. Reason can calculate what will be the consequences of acting in one way or the other, but it cannot by itself motivate one to act in wither way, just because it does not include any kind of desire for these consequences. So, for Hume, there cnnot be such a thing as a conflict between reason and desire (passion) and that is why he claims in a famous phrase, that 'reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions' (Hume Treatise on Human Nature, II. iii. 3.)
Aristotle invents a term, orexis, or 'appetition', which covers both bodily desires (for food, sex, tobacco etc.) and rational desires for long-term health, or honor or virtue. Thus Aristotle understands that we can desire things which are not good for us long term.