> "Happiness?" No its not a feeling... its a cultural norm. Synonyms
> are:
> "Success". "Luck" etc...
The "state of being a good person" isn't a "cultural norm"; "the good state is truth in agreement with right desire".
So Aristotle wouldn't ascribe "eudaimonia" to a "successful" torturer and lyncher in a community where torturing and lynching were the cultural norm.
To have him saying something as stupid as this, you'd have to show that the meaning of the passages I quoted is the opposite of the meaning of the original Greek.
Doss's illustration of mistranslation didn't show that Aristotle had no concept of "essence"; it showed that his concept was the developmental one I've pointed to many, many, many times on this list as the concept of "essence" in Marx.
In the case of the human "essence", Marx also sublates the idea of the human "essence" and the related ideas of "courage" and "friendship" in the passages I quoted.
“What affirmation and negation are in thinking, pursuit and avoidance are in desire; so that since moral virtue is a state of character concerned with choice, and choice is deliberate desire, therefore both the reasoning must be true and the desire right, if the choice is to be good, and the latter must pursue just what the former asserts, Now this kind of intellect and of truth is practical; of the intellect which is contemplative, not practical nor productive, the good and the bad state are truth and falsity respectively (for this is the work of everything intellectual); while of the part which is practical and intellectual the good state is truth in agreement with right desire.
“The origin of action—its efficient, not its final cause—is choice, and that of choice is desire and reasoning with a view to an end, This is why choice cannot exist either without reason and intellect or without a moral state; for good action and its opposite cannot exist without a combination of intellect and character, Intellect itself, however, moves nothing, but only the intellect which aims at an end and is practical; for this rules the productive intellect, as well, since every one who makes makes for an end, and that which is made is not an end in the unqualified sense (but only an end in a particular relation, and the end of a particular operation)—only that which is done is that; for good action is an end, and desire aims at this, Hence choice is either desiderative reason or ratiocinative desire, and such an origin of action is a man.” <http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.6.vi.html>
“The man, then, who faces and who fears the right things and from the right motive, in the right way and from the right time, and who feels confidence under the corresponding conditions, is brave; for the brave man feels and acts according to the merits of the case and in whatever way the rule directs. Now the end of every activity is conformity to the corresponding state of character. This is true, therefore, of the brave man as well as of others. But courage is noble. Therefore the end also is noble; for each thing is defined by its end. Therefore it is for a noble end that the brave man endures and acts as courage directs.” <http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.3.iii.html>
“Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good themselves. Now those who wish well to their friends for their sake are most truly friends; for they do this by reason of own nature and not incidentally; therefore their friendship lasts as long as they are good-and goodness is an enduring thing.” <http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.8.viii.html>
Ted