Aristotle's view on happiness Flashcards
Aristotle bio background
- Born in Stagrya in northern Greece
- not an Athenian citizen, but moved to Athens
- became a student of Plato (who was a student of socrates)
- founded his own school (the Lyceum) in competition to Plato’s (the academy) sometime after Plato’s death
- Had big impact on ancient world
- tutored Alexander the Great
- wrote a SHIT TON but they’re missing
- a lot of was burned in the Library of Alexandria
- the books we’re reading are the scrolls from his lectures edited together after his death
“Happiness” – eudaimonia
God-blessed, flourishing
“soul” – psyche
- “mind”, “living essence”
- NOT some immortal, non-material essence like in Christianity
“ethics” (or morality) — ethike; derived from ethos (habit)
- some guidance as to how to live
- different from Judeo-Christian view involving “sin” and “guilt”
- here, it’s more about developing good habits for flourishing life
“Virtue” — arete
- excellence
- good with respect to the kind of thing it is
- good at playing the flute = virtue with the flute
How did aristotle approach philosophy?
- Empiricism — look to facts learned from experience
- survey the common wisdom of the wise and of things broadly agreed upon
- define categories of things by what is distinctive about them, which often corresponds to their FUNCTION
- humans compared to animals → what’s distinctive about humans?
Aristotle’s view of man
-
“Man” as the “political animal”
- Aristotle had a lot of chauvinism
- did not think that people are equal
Man as distinctively RATIONAL – distinguishes people from animal
what is the highest science?
POLITICAL SCIENCE, because it studies the most important thing:
- how to make function society
- aims are human happiness, for flourishing of the city
aristotle’s views of rationality
- it rules over irrational parts of the soul
- people only become good at this through practice or habituation
what kind of people have “virtues” of character?
people with proper RATIONAL control over their emotions
they do the right thing in the right way in teh circumstances in which it s called for
- PRACTICAL WISDOM
what kind of happiness does most of nicomachean ethics focus on?
as connected to the life of the “politically” active eprson
What is happiness, according to aristotle?
the end at which people aim in activity
it can count as THE good!!
- complete: happiness isn’t a means to get to an end, everything good leaves to happiness so it contains all other goods
- self-sufficient: if you have happiness, you have an enviable life
Virtue relating to happiness, according to aristotle
- having virtue does not guarantee a happy life (luck) but one can’t be happy without it
- one isn’t certainly happy while alive, since everything could always turn to shit 🙂
pleasures and pains are sometimes impediments to acting well, BUT!! in the virtuously habituated person:
- pleasure in doing the right action
- pain in acting badly
- the practically wise person can be guided by their sense of what brings them pleasure and what brings them pain
- being “happy” is not a state of mind or feeling
