Is Virtue Sufficient for Happiness?

Question 1

YES: Socrates

Answer 1

• to know the good is to do the good.
• Virtue is knowledge and wrongdoing is merely ignorance. - - - Therefore you’ll live the good life (reach happiness) if you have virtue/knowledge

Question 2

YES: Cynics

Answer 2

• rejection of the nomos and finding virtue in physis (living with nature, and true to one’s nature)
• self sufficiency: you can be happy and find contentment from within

Question 3

YES: Stoics

Answer 3

• living in conformity to what happens and being indifferent to external circumstances (without feeling) comes from within, and that’s an inner virtue that is sufficient for happiness
• self-control, self-sufficiency, and logic/logs are stoic virtues there are sufficient for the happy life
• “find retreat within yourself”

Question 4

NOT REALLY: Plato

Answer 4

• the soul is: reason, desire, spirit and happiness is from the harmony of the parts. Virtue/wisdom plays a crucial role but isn’t the only thing causing happiness: harmony is
• true happiness is when we’re freed from physical desires - when we die and our souls live forever. the closest thing we can get to that is to be a philosopher and practice for death

Question 5

NO: Aristotle

Answer 5

You need three things to be happy:

1. internal goods (virtue)
2. external goods (good looks)
3. good fortune

though he is the philosopher of becoming, he says we can become MAIMED and lose our potential to have internal goods (virtue). He is not a complete absolutist but not a free for all either about who can be virtuous.

also, he literally said life is not worth living if you don’t have friends lol

Question 6

NO: Epicureans

Answer 6

Pleasures is the ultimate goal of life. You need virtue/prudence to navigate indulgence or denials of prudence but ultimately the happy life is the hedonistic life

Also, you get happiness from the natural sciences, and you’re happy when you don’t fear God or death.

Also, you need friends!

Question 7

I DON’T KNOW
Skeptics

Answer 7

Skeptics wouldn’t have claimed to know what leads to happiness. Pyrrohian skeptics believed that equipollence, leads to mental suspension, which leads to tranquility, and the “happy life”
So, maybe they would say you can be happy by not having dogmatic claims about what is sufficient for happiness! (sounds like a dogmatic claim though lol)

Question 8

NOOO!!!!
Sophists

Answer 8

How can the founders of “might makes right” and “man is the measure of all things” think virtue is important? Sophists like Callicles even mocked virtue and said that being strong, powerful, hedonistic, is the best life.