Chapter 7: The Good Life

Eudaimonia
Literally “good spirited,” a term coined by Aristotle, based on his Nichomachean Ethics, to describe the
pinnacle happiness attainable to humans. From the Greek words eu, meaning “good” and daimon, meaning
“spirit.”

Arete – excellence or virtue.

Happiness – the ultimate end of human action. It comes from living a life of virtue (arete), a life of excellence.

Types of Virtue:

1. Intellectual – owes its birth and growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience, education and
time).
2. Moral – comes about as a result of habitual practice. As example, moral virtues are courage, patience, etc.

John Stuart Mill's “The Greatest Happiness Principle”

Based on Jeremy Bentham’s Felicific Calculus. It posits that if an action benefits the greatest number of people, it is
deemed ethical. There is no need to attain the happiness of everyone as people have different sources of happiness.

Schools of Thought which Aim the Good and Happy Life:

Materialism – only material things could bring happiness. No need to posit immaterial things (abstract ideas)
as a source of purpose. The Atomists like Democritus and Leucippus proposed that the world is made up of
and is controlled by tiny, indivisible units called atomos, or seeds.
Hedonism – the end goal of life is in acquiring pleasure. Life is about obtaining and indulging in pleasure as
life is limited. Their mantra is “eat, drink, and be merry – for tomorrow we die.”
Stoicism – to generate happiness, one must learn to distance himself and be apathetic (came from the
word apatheia, or indifference). Happiness can only be attained in the careful practice of apathy. There are
things outside of our control (like other peoples’ feelings) and the sooner we realize this, the happier we
become.
Theism – people find happiness if they use God as the fulcrum of their lives (putting God in the center of their
lives). People base their life goals on beliefs that is hinged on some form of supernatural reality called Heaven.
The ultimate basis of happiness is the communion with God.
Humanism – this espouses the freedom of man to carve his own destiny and to legislate his own laws, free
from the shackles of God that monitors and controls. Man is literally the captain of his own ship.

Summary:
The good life leads to or constitutes the happy life. Happiness, a normative concept, is decompossible into
cognitive and affective components. We could say that people enjoy the exercise of their realized capacities
and that this enjoyment increases the more that their capacities are realized. Happiness can be viewed as a
result and a condition of living right.