Talk:Eudaimonia/Archive 1

Archive 1

Someone's Question

Does Aristotle feel that all humans aim at eudaimonia as being one of his inquiries?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.232.100.203 (talk) 07:23, 10 March 2004 (UTC)

no — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.229.29.19 (talk) 17:49, 6 September 2004 (UTC)

sources?

Presumably this article refers to Nichomachean Ethics as the source text but perhaps someone would like to insert some relevant margin references...? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.202.150.35 (talk) 23:27, 31 January 2005 (UTC)

Question

This sentence seems not to quite fit in the intro:

"Although popular usage of the term happiness refer to a state of mind, often joy or pleasure."

Should it be: "Popular usage of the term 'happiness' refers to a state of mind, often connotated with joy or pleasure." ?

I'm going to change it, but feel free to revert it if I missed something obvious. I'd also like to see some further reading or references, as I might want to read more on this topic, and perhaps others will as well. --DanielCD 02:56, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I've rewritten the summary; I wasn't sure what "connotated with" was intended to mean, but I hope that the new version is clearer. I've included a correction of the etymology; according to Liddell & Scott, anyway, the word "daimon" was used to refer to one's lot or fortune by the time of Homer, and the emphasis on supernatural beings was misleading.

One of my favourite lines from an exam script came a few years ago when a candidate (reading PPE) wrote in his Aristotle paper: "If Aristotle had meant "eudaimonia" to mean "happiness", he'd have said so"... --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:12, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

By Homer? In the fifth century there are plenty of uses of daimon to mean a supernatural being between man and god, often serving as a sort of link between the two. Plato, for instance, is littered with this use (e.g. Socrates' daimon; the description of daimon in the Symposium). I not sure checking the LS is enough to research to motivate a change, you could look, for example, at some literature on the topic. Dover, to take on example, discusses it in his Greek Popular Morality. Dast 18:19, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

requesting a redirect from "eudaimonea"

Pretty please? It appears this way in some places, I believe. If not, and I'm wrong, then it would be kind of you to reply here and note a reference for everyones further edification. Thanks!!! 65.112.197.16 (talk) 18:50, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Summary

The summary needs work. You should be able to read it and get the concept. It contains 2 loose translations, but I still don't know what the concept is supposed to be. I'm sure it can be improved. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.104.46.159 (talk) 04:46, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Important Changes

I think this article needs the following changes (some of which I may, slowly, do after I see some responses and hopefully enlist some help):

• Mention of eudaimonia in Socrates and Plato is needed.
• Translating eudaimonia as 'human flourishing' is not that controversial. Currently the article mentions, the first without reference, two authors that argue for this translation - perhaps they should be footnoted instead.
• Listing the universities a scholar works or has worked at, presumably to add some ad hominem wieght to the translation 'human flourishing', seems unnecessary. This information is better placed on the scholars own entry.
• A report of what Huston Smith said at a conference is probably not central enough to the topic to warrant mention in this entry, especially since a third of it is about his own achievments.
• The bullet-pointed summary of Aristotle's Ethics is not very nice to read. Although they would perhaps be good revision notes, they could painlessly be replaced by a brief (prose) summary of eudaimonia's significance in Aristotle's work and a link to his Nichomachean Ethics.

--Dast 16:31, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Generally, I agree with the proposed changes. The section of Nicomachean Ethics which refers to eudaimonia is subtitled 'The essence and function of being human'. It has been one of the trickier parts to write--I have recently rewritten NicEth, but much of this section is still there from previous versions. At the moment it doesn't have as much detail as the bullet-point list here, although it is more readable.

I could use some help in trying to combine these two--the list here and the section there. I agree that the details should go into the Nicomachean Ethics article, and getting a good topic sentence/summary bit for the section which could be copied back here. Let me know your thoughts.WhiteC 04:04, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

That sounds good. Do you agree that this article should be relatively small, with something like the following structure: a paragraph on eudaimonia in general, a paragraph or two on its use in Socrates and Plato, and a paragraph or two on its use in Aristotle? There may be more that should be added (for example, on other ancient authors or its influence on modern thinkers (e.g. Alasdair MacIntyre)), but this would be a start. I'll try to do the first two sections, hopefully in the next few days. As for the Aristotle section, I might be able to write a mediocre to fair summary of his use of eudaimonia, but I'll think about the first two sections for the moment. Also, it would be nice to track down a definitive article on eudaimonia as 'human flourishing', to place in a footnote. --Dast 09:41, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

I rewrote the introduction. Question: it is common to italicise latin versions of Greek words that haven't been incorporated into English (e.g. eudaimonia), but I notice that this is rarely done on WP, is there any WP policy?

I copied the bulleted list across to the discussion page of Nicomachean Ethics, and I'm working on it over there. I'll let you know when I get it into usable form and copy it into the article there. WhiteC 06:15, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

OK, still working on NicEth over there. Keeping you up-to-date, I will just note that not all of the bulleted list is going into the section on eudaimonia. The bullet points seem to be a summary of the NicEth in general, with specific attention paid to the role of eudaimonia as the overall goal of human activity. Other parts, such as the function of being human, have been useful in different sections of the article, but not directly related to eudaimonia. WhiteC 22:12, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Done. The summary of Aristotle's ethics relating to eudaimonia which is already here looks good. WhiteC 20:45, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

I think that's fine, there is a lot in that list. I'll have the Socrates and Plato up fairly soon, at which point I might just take the list out, leaving the Aristotle prose for the moment. Once we've dealt with the Aristotle, it might be good to think about the Stoic and Epicurean side; just a brief note is needed I think. Good work on the Ethics, by the way.

--Dast 14:03, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Derrick Jensen says in his book "Walking on Water" (p. 46) about eudaimonia: "It's commonly translated as "happiness", but I believe a more accurate translation would be "fittingness": how well your actions match your gifts, match who you are." And he goes on: "My understanding of it is that after we die, we spend a hundred lifetimes being treated how we treated others here on earth, after which we go back into the pool of those to be reborn. When our turn comes we decide who will be our parents and what will be our gifts, our purpose. Just before hopping back to this side we drink something that causes us to forget and here we are. It becomse our task in this world to remember our gifts, our task, and to realize them, with the help of guiding spirits, or daimons. Thus "eudaimonia, which literally means "having a good guardian spiirit."" Personally I quite like these explainations. It's up to you to use them for the main page or not. -- termi 17:16, 8. Nov. 2006 (CEST)

That is interesting, but it is very speculative, more of a theory about the word than a straightforward account of its meaning. There are so many theories of the word, so I would suggest sticking to what we have. It is interesting, though. Dast 12:15, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the problem is that the happiness regarding "human flourishing" is pretty inaccessible to the lay reader. Does it mean that the person makes lots of babies? Does it mean they feel they have security in their job, relationships, and life - such that they can focus on what they are doing? Is it more about encouraging others to have these traits or your self? Could a dog have eudamonia? A fish? A rock? How would you describe eudamonia to a high school student who hasn't taken three years of philosophy? Mike Fox 15:25, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

The main thing ive noticd that is wrong with this is that it explicitly says that eudaimonia is not to do with wealth or good looks, my philosophy teachers all say that it is an important part of eudaimonia and is a fairly important thing to note on here as it is one of the main criticisms of eudaimonia, that the unfortuneately ugly or those trapped in poverty cant achieve eudaimonia, which is pretty unsavoury to modern ears.(----)

That was indeed one of the popular views of eudaimonia (and an interesting difference from our view, especially the importance the Greeks gave to physical beauty), but the article deals primarily with the views of the philosophers of the time. Socrates, for instance, was a famously ugly man - he certainly would not have associated happiness and good looks! As to wealth, it is portrayed as at the very most as an inessential means happiness. Incidentally, if your interested, for some more on the popular view you can look at Kenneth Dover Greek Popular Ethics in the Time of Plato and Aristotle. Dast 19:49, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Virtue or virtù?

Hey, everyone. After looking around on this page and at Virtue and Virtù, I'm pretty sure that someone is getting them confused - either that, or the French term of Machiavelli is the same as the transliterated Greek, but the link in this article points to the wrong one. "Virtù" is a concept defining right behavior in terms of national interest (raison d'État) and not in terms of morality, which I'd say is pretty obviously not what Aristotle and the Stoics advocate constitutes eudaimonia. I'm going to go ahead and remove the link to Virtù in the paragraph about Aristotle - that way, the page makes no assertion about whether "virtù" refers to the Machiavellian term or not. But obviously someone with knowledge of the Greek should go through and sort things out. If the concept of "virtù" mentioned here is the same as simply Virtue, it'd be better just to use the English term consistently (or at least add a note clarifying the transliteration). If not, there should be an article about the Greek concept to link to instead of the one about Machiavelli. Brad Gibbons (talk) 11:11, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Eudemonia/Eudaimonia

I know there are variant spellings, but shouldn't wiktionary (e) and wikipedia (ai) be consistent? Which ought to move? MickO'Bants (talk) 20:26, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Eudaimonia would be the more correct, or more "Greek." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.39.156.16 (talk) 18:00, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Merge

Copy from archive of wikiproject philosphy: I've placed merge tags on eudaimonia and eudaimonism but I'm not entirely sure how to proceed. Could an expert take a look at both of these articles and determine the best course of action? FWIW, eudaimonia was the original article, created in Feb. 2003. Eudaimonism was created a year later, in Jan. 2004. Viriditas (talk) 09:03, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

No other opinions on the merge suggestion?

Grammatically, the *ia and *ism seem to be the same thing. Is there some conceptual difference that keeps them separate, and can this be incorporated into the title (ie Eudaimonia (mythology) and Eudaimonia (pschology)? From reading the current content, they seem to cover the same topic, so i say mergeYobMod 12:46, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

In medicine

When I was doing my degree project linking Spirituality with Darwin's second work (and other native issues), I found many references to eudaimonia with respect to medicine as an on-going construct, typically linking compassion to strengthened immune systems. In terms of ethics, this application should go a long way to improving the present state of Medicine: expensive and painful!--John Bessa (talk) 20:59, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Further, I recently heard that a final removal of eudaimonia from medicine is in formation; a psychotherapist friend related a New York Times article that cited a movement to create a pure-testing regimen for diagnosis to "remove doctor's intuition from treatment." The definition of medial eudaimonia that I know is "healing by learning." But that is becoming increasingly impossible as people of "pure intelligence" (Goleman) are being given preferance over people who actually have the emotional communication neurology necessary for intuitive diagnosis. I see little that is emotional, experiential, or even education-based in this article, so perhaps the writers (if not most of wp) are in the latter class, and hence not neurologically qualified to even discuss eudaimonia, let alone write with authority.--John Bessa (talk) 20:27, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

A sentence I removed from the intro

I removed the following from the intro:

English "happiness" refers to a subjective state or overall measure of designated states as an assessment of the quality of one’s life, whereas eudaimonia refers to the experience of a life course which is [[categorical imperative|objectively desirable]] in itself<ref name=twsJun5a/>.

My reason for this is that this assertion seems to come from an opinion piece in the Huffington Post and while that does not make it wrong, it does not appear to me to represent any mainstream consensus on either the meaning of the meaning of the English word "happiness" or how it should be contrasted with eudaimonia. (I would suggest that this author's understanding of English is heavily influenced by philosophy, specifically 19th and 20th century Anglo-Saxon philosophy including economics, whereas the citation makes a claim about English generally.) Comments welcome though of course.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:24, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Downloadable papers

References 11, 12, and 13 are all available to download and read via Google Scholar. 92.28.242.170 (talk) 19:45, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Broken link for pronunciation

I could not get a pronunciation sounded out when clicking on the speaker button on the first line. I am using FireFox 8.0 and Windows 7. Thebeard88 (talk) 00:49, 12 December 2011 (UTC)