Anonymous
6/12/2025, 10:05:48 AM No.24460867
How does Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia as the highest human good differ from modern ideas of happiness or success?
Replies:
Thread 24460867 - /lit/ [Archived: 1034 hours ago]
Anonymous
6/12/2025, 10:17:48 AM No.24460876
>>24460867 (OP)
We live in a very consumist society. It is explained in book 1 why money or power does not give happiness, only virtue does.
Every person has a different idea of what "happiness" might be for them though.
We live in a very consumist society. It is explained in book 1 why money or power does not give happiness, only virtue does.
Every person has a different idea of what "happiness" might be for them though.
Anonymous
6/12/2025, 10:44:02 AM No.24460898
>>24460867 (OP)
As the other anon said, he puts a big emphasis on virtue as the means of achieving eudaimonia (though it still depends on other things, you couldn't achieve it if you spent your life locked in a torture dungeon). Most people today, it's not that they don't care about morality, but they tend to think of it as a burden or a constraint on their happiness/success rather than something rewarding. That's a product of Christianity where virtue is only rewarded in the next life, blessed are the poor, first will be last etc.
As the other anon said, he puts a big emphasis on virtue as the means of achieving eudaimonia (though it still depends on other things, you couldn't achieve it if you spent your life locked in a torture dungeon). Most people today, it's not that they don't care about morality, but they tend to think of it as a burden or a constraint on their happiness/success rather than something rewarding. That's a product of Christianity where virtue is only rewarded in the next life, blessed are the poor, first will be last etc.
Replies:
Anonymous
6/12/2025, 10:53:11 AM No.24460904
>>24460898
virtue changes throughout history and across different cultures so that's not really an answer
virtue changes throughout history and across different cultures so that's not really an answer
Anonymous
6/12/2025, 11:02:28 AM No.24460913
>>24460867 (OP)
Being happy is a good manners not just money or power like people are able to preceive
Being happy is a good manners not just money or power like people are able to preceive
Anonymous
6/12/2025, 11:10:33 AM No.24460918
>>24460898
That's not the product of Christ also you can be moral and happy and rich it happens a lot more than you imagine
That's not the product of Christ also you can be moral and happy and rich it happens a lot more than you imagine
Anonymous
6/12/2025, 1:33:14 PM No.24461068
>>24460867 (OP)
The highest form of good is good humans
The highest form of good is good humans
Anonymous
6/12/2025, 2:48:40 PM No.24461182
>>24460867 (OP)
Virtue as Aristotle puts it is between excess and deficience.
The way that I'd phrase It in modern day is that it's all about self-control, control over your life, keeping your ability to make choices, staying independent; capable of saying "no". It's keeping volitional control over emotions and promoting the preservation of your volition as the highest good through gaining strength, intelligence, making friends, striving for excellence to demonstrate your ability to think for yourself.
The rest of this is me taking this view very far:
Addiction bad when you become dependent, when you cannot say no through willpower (independence is always a matter of degree on whether you can say no).
Pleasure is fine when you do it in moderation, that is when you keep it as a mechanism of reward for living well, for keeping control over you life and actions, keeping volitional choice on top.
Striving for excellence is a way to make yourself feel independent, to feel like you're not copying someone ideas/instructions or just keeping up with habits of the past. It's important to feel like you've made something on your own and that you can think for yourself.
Seeking to erase "suffering" is kind of pointless if you do it at the cost of human choice. it's fine if you independently empathize with people not controlling their lives due to oppression or forces of nature and decide to help, but once you make charity a duty and make the receiver feel powerless and turn him into a beggar and making him feel like he's right in this, you've erased everything that's good about the act.
In my view animals die when they organ fail and actually die but humans or individuals start dying when they deny themselves, when they deny their ability to evaluate situations and choose for themselves. It's why totalitarian dystopia are perceived as bad, it's not some immeasurable amount of suffering they cause, it's loss of independent choice. When I refer to *I*, to *me*, much more than body and emotions I refer to the control process over those, volition. If you deny the evaluation of what you want or the action towards it (the will or the power as Nietzsche puts it) you're kind of killing yourself already, you cease to exist, as *you* are not much more than control over body from my perspective.
---
The curse of humanity is turning every action that people do to promote the independence of volition into duty; thereby destroying everything good about it in the process. Whether it's helping others, seeking power, seeking "consumption" pleasure, doing productive work.
Virtue as Aristotle puts it is between excess and deficience.
The way that I'd phrase It in modern day is that it's all about self-control, control over your life, keeping your ability to make choices, staying independent; capable of saying "no". It's keeping volitional control over emotions and promoting the preservation of your volition as the highest good through gaining strength, intelligence, making friends, striving for excellence to demonstrate your ability to think for yourself.
The rest of this is me taking this view very far:
Addiction bad when you become dependent, when you cannot say no through willpower (independence is always a matter of degree on whether you can say no).
Pleasure is fine when you do it in moderation, that is when you keep it as a mechanism of reward for living well, for keeping control over you life and actions, keeping volitional choice on top.
Striving for excellence is a way to make yourself feel independent, to feel like you're not copying someone ideas/instructions or just keeping up with habits of the past. It's important to feel like you've made something on your own and that you can think for yourself.
Seeking to erase "suffering" is kind of pointless if you do it at the cost of human choice. it's fine if you independently empathize with people not controlling their lives due to oppression or forces of nature and decide to help, but once you make charity a duty and make the receiver feel powerless and turn him into a beggar and making him feel like he's right in this, you've erased everything that's good about the act.
In my view animals die when they organ fail and actually die but humans or individuals start dying when they deny themselves, when they deny their ability to evaluate situations and choose for themselves. It's why totalitarian dystopia are perceived as bad, it's not some immeasurable amount of suffering they cause, it's loss of independent choice. When I refer to *I*, to *me*, much more than body and emotions I refer to the control process over those, volition. If you deny the evaluation of what you want or the action towards it (the will or the power as Nietzsche puts it) you're kind of killing yourself already, you cease to exist, as *you* are not much more than control over body from my perspective.
---
The curse of humanity is turning every action that people do to promote the independence of volition into duty; thereby destroying everything good about it in the process. Whether it's helping others, seeking power, seeking "consumption" pleasure, doing productive work.