> Philip Pilkington wrote:
>
> "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".
Well... one or two things on this. First off, the latter statement, if it is to be interpreted literally, seems to mean something like: "one should adhere, agree to the whole". All those moral elements contained within (there are four) seem to indicate that one should integrate, or "agree" with some sort of ideal - my definition of happiness as a cultural norm, by the way.
Secondly, and this is directly related, although my knowledge of Greek philosophy isn't great, I'm well aware that the systems of Plato and Aristotle subsequently gave way to those of the Stoics, the Epicureans and the Academics. These philosophies concerned themselves less with Absolute Knowledge (to put it in relatively contemporary parlance) and more so with how one should live. These seem to have been, for whatever reason, more descriptive of the way people live. Could we ascribe the same role to Kierkegaard's criticism of Hegel's system... perhaps, but that's not the essential point. The essential point is this: no matter how far back in civilisation you go it doesn't make that knowledge/terminology more "true" or "pure" than contemporary knowledge/terminology. To project in that manner is mythic in the strong sense of the term.
>
>
> So Aristotle wouldn't ascribe "eudaimonia" to a "successful" torturer and
> lyncher in a community where torturing and lynching were the cultural norm.
A cultural norm is not 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.
I didn't put words in his mouth... I merely gave him a ear.
>
>
> 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.
>
Personally I think that any notion of essence is far more problematic and difficult to grasp than anything Marx or Aristotle could have said. Why refer to them for contemporary problems anyway? The notion of essence, which I wouldn't abandon, is surely historically mediated and so we, or at least more contemporary philosophers, should be in a better position to articulate it than Marx and Aristotle... Its certainly, in my opinion, not correlative with "happiness"!