Aristotle's answer to [the question of what our lives are about] is happiness. Happiness is the end of life.
. . .
But the meaning of the word happiness has changed since Aristotle's time. We usually mean by it today something wholly subjective, a feeling. If you feel happy, you are happy. But Aristotle, and nearly all premodern writers, meant that happiness was an objective state first of all, not merely a subjective feeling. The Greek word for happiness, eudaimonia, literally means good spirit, or good soul. By this definition, Job on his dung heap is happy. Socrates unjustly condemned to die is happy. Hitler exulting over the conquest of France is not happy. Happiness is not a warm puppy. Happiness is goodness.
. . .
What gives our lives meaning? What is our end? Modernity answers, feeling good. the ancients answer, being good. Feeling good is not compatible with suffering; being good is. Therefore the fact of suffering threatens modernity much more than it threatens the ancients.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Peter Kreeft, Aristotle, Happiness and Pain
Here's more Kreeft, this time on Aristotle's answer to the problem of suffering:
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2 comments:
The word's now in English, rather than in Greek. But the meaning hasn't changed. A person may be happy, and a person may feel happy. Aristotle followed Plato who learned from Socrates who was by due process of law convicted in a jury trial, condemned to death, and executed for corrupting the youth of Athens, who argues a similar point in Euthydemus.
I suspect that we moderns tend reflexively to follow Crito.
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