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PAPERS ON ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
WHY SO MANY PHILOSOPHERS ARE UNHAPPY WITH HAPPINESS VIA ARISTOTLE why_so_many_philosophers_are_unhappy_with_happiness_via_aristotle.pdf Presented at the Conference of the New Jersey Association of Philosophy, Fall 2001 Extract: "The main issue of Aristotelian ethics is how to reach eudaimonia (happiness), and there is the endless argument in the modern Anglo-American interpretation of Aristotelianism regarding the principle of eudaimonia in Aristotle. The purpose of this paper is to resolve this endless argument. The interpreters are divided into two camps. The first camp argues that the principle of eudaimonia is one dominant or exclusive telos (end) of the arete (virtue) of theoria (contemplation of the divine). The second camp argues that the principle of eudaimonia is an inclusive or compounded telos containing this and all other Aristotelian virtues (a compound model), because, otherwise, if eudaimonia is only contemplation, the person engaged in contemplation will neglect moral virtues, if their exercising will destruct his contemplation. Nonetheless, both inclusivists and exclusivists admit that the textual evidence for their accounts is inconclusive. Consequently, they consider the account of Aristotelian ethics to be inconsistent and ambiguous. I argue that Aristotelian eudaimonia, while being neither inclusive nor exclusive, is a proportion consisting of two ratios (the solution never offered before), and that Aristotle is consistent." |
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