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What can Aristotle teach us about the routes to happiness? - Edith Hall | Aeon Essays
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Aristotle gave us an alternative conception of happiness
It cannot be acquired by pleasurable experiences but only by identifying and realizing our own potential, moral and creative, in our specific environments, with our particular family, friends and colleagues, and helping others to do so.
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Our Fixation With Happiness
- Most of us actively try to build our lives around a constant state of happiness.
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The Meaning Of A Good Life
Maximisation of pleasure is erroneously thought to be the path towards a good life. Avoidance of pain, disappointment, injury, sickness, boredom, loneliness and sadness is what is generally pursued by all, not realizing that pain and suffering are inevitable if one is alive.
Philosophers like Epicurus claim that a good life is attained when pain is minimized. But as happiness comes with loving attachments, pain becomes inevitable and even necessary in our path towards happiness.
Life Is Nothing Without Pain
Anything good in life requires some amount of toil and suffering.
Writing a novel, preparing and eventually running a marathon, or giving birth requires sacrifice, patience, pain and suffering, eventually producing something meaningful and joyous.
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Leonardo Da Vinci on how to be successful
- Action: “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
- ...
Advice from Bertrand Russell
- Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
- Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
- Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
- Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
- Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
- Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
- Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.
Polymaths and mastery
Polymaths manage to achieve mastery across multiple industries, arts, or fields of study. What sets them apart? The willingness and drive to learn new.
Defining Eudaimonia
Eudaimonia is a term which comes from Aristotle’s work called ‘Nicomachean Ethics’ and means individual well-being and happiness. It combines the prefix eu (meaning good) ...
Plato And Eudaimonism
- Plato believed that because we feel unhappy internally when we do something wrong, eudaimonia is the highest feeling of moral thought and behaviour where there is real happiness from within. Happiness, according to him, was about living in the pursuit of various virtues, central to flourishing.
- Plato never mentioned the term eudaimonia, but his writings on the concept of courage, justice, wisdom and moderation point towards the same domain of wellbeing.
Aristotle And Eudaimonism
Aristotle in his many works has provided numerous interpretations of eudaimonia, explaining it as something reflecting the pursuit of virtue, excellence and the best within us. According to him, eudaimonia is a rational activity aimed at the pursuit of what is worthwhile in life.
Having an intention to be virtuous was an important factor for eudaimonia.