Eudaimonia
Aristotle's term for the highest human good, usually translated as flourishing — the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue across a complete life.
Eudaimonia is the central concept of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. The Greek word combines eu (good) and daimon (spirit) and means something closer to having a good guiding spirit than to the modern English happiness, which connotes a feeling state. For Aristotle, eudaimonia is not a feeling but an activity: the lifelong activity of the rational soul in accordance with virtue, exercised within a well-ordered political community.
The Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics adopted the vocabulary of eudaimonia while disagreeing on its content. The Stoics held that eudaimonia consists in virtue alone; the Epicureans, in stable pleasure; the Skeptics, in suspended judgment. The Anglophone revival of virtue ethics in the twentieth century — Anscombe, Foot, MacIntyre, Nussbaum — has returned to Aristotle's framework as an alternative to deontological and utilitarian ethics.
The translation of eudaimonia is itself a philosophical issue. Happiness suggests a felt state and a transient mood — exactly what Aristotle denies the concept names. Flourishing captures the activity-aspect but loses the connotation of having a good guiding spirit (eu-daimon) that the Greek word carried. Recent translators including Sarah Broadie and Jonathan Lear have left the term untranslated to preserve its difficulty.
A persistent dispute concerns whether eudaimonia includes external goods. Aristotle holds that some external goods — health, basic resources, friends — are required for the full activity of virtue, so that misfortune can damage eudaimonia even when virtue is preserved. The Stoics rejected this concession: virtue is sufficient for eudaimonia, and external misfortune cannot detract from it. The Aristotle-Stoic dispute over whether eudaimonia is robust to misfortune remains the central question for any ancient ethics that treats happiness as the human good.
How philosophers have framed eudaimonia
| Philosopher | Position |
|---|---|
| Aristotle | Activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, requiring some external goods. |
| Plato | Achieved by the soul whose rational part rules over spirit and appetite. |
| Epicurus | Identified with stable pleasure and freedom from disturbance (ataraxia). |
| Zeno of Citium | Virtue alone; external goods are indifferent. |
| Epictetus | Achieved by directing assent only to what is up to us. |
| Marcus Aurelius | Willing consent to the rational order of the cosmos. |
Representative quotes
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Aristotle
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“Anyone can become angry — that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”
οὕτω δὲ καὶ τὸ μὲν ὀργισθῆναι παντὸς καὶ ῥᾴδιον, καὶ τὸ δοῦναι ἀργύριον καὶ δαπανῆσαι· τὸ δ᾽ ᾧ καὶ ὅσον καὶ ὅτε καὶ οὗ ἕνεκα καὶ ὥς, οὐκέτι παντὸς οὐδὲ ῥᾴδιον
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Plato
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“If the very essence of knowledge changes, at the moment of the change to another essence of knowledge there would be no knowledge, and if it is always changing, there will always be no knowledge, and by this reasoning there will be neither anyone to know nor anything to be known. But if there is always that which knows and that which is known —if the beautiful, the good, and all the other verities exist— I do not see how there is any likeness between these conditions of which I am now speaking and flux or motion.”
440a–b
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Epicurus
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“It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living pleasantly.”
Οὐκ ἔστιν ἡδέως ζῆν ἄνευ τοῦ φρονίμως καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως, οὐδὲ φρονίμως καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως ἄνευ τοῦ ἡδέως. ὅτῳ δὲ τοῦτο μὴ ὑπάρχει ἐξ οὗ ζῆν φρονίμως, καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως ὑπάρχει, οὐκ ἔστι τοῦτον ἡδέως ζῆν.
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Zeno of Citium
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“We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say.”
As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers , vii. 23. | Variant translation: The reason why we have two ears and only one mouth is that we may listen the more and talk the less.
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Epictetus
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“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”
Τίς εἶναι θέλεις, σαυτῷ πρῶτον ἐιπέ· εἶθ᾿ οὕτως ποίει ἃ ποιεῖς.
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Marcus Aurelius
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“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.”
Μηκέθ᾽ ὅλως περὶ τοῦ οἷόν τινα εἶναι τὸν ἀγαθὸν ἄνδρα διαλέγεσθαι, ἀλλὰ εἶναι τοιοῦτον. | X, 16
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