> Chris Doss wrote:
>
> Eudaimonia (WHICH IS NOT HAPPINESS) is the state of being a good (that is,
>> admirable and enviable) person, specifically as understood by 4th century BC
>> Greeks.
>>
>
> No it isn't, as is evident from the passages I quoted.
>
> What the "many" believe "eudaimonia" to be isn't one thing and is mistaken;
> it's not what the "wise" believe.
>
> The "wise" are those with the developed capabilities required for
> "philosophic wisdom", i.e. for valid "reasoning" to the "first principles"
> of "moral science" (there being a "distinction between arguments that start
> from first principles and those that lead to first principles").
>
> It's only "verbally" that there's "general agreement".
>
> That's evident even in translations that misleadingly translate
> "eudaimonia" as "happiness".
>
> "Let us resume our inquiry and state, in view of the fact that all
> knowledge and every pursuit aims at some good, what it is that we say
> political science aims at and what is the highest of all goods achievable by
> action. Verbally there is very general agreement; for both the general run
> of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and
> identify living well and doing well with being happy; but with regard to
> what happiness is they differ, and the many do not give the same account as
> the wise. For the former think it is some plain and obvious thing, like
> pleasure, wealth, or honour; they differ, however, from one another - and
> often even the same man identifies it with different things, with health
> when he is ill, with wealth when he is poor; but, conscious of their
> ignorance, they admire those who proclaim some great ideal that is above
> their comprehension."
> <http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.1.i.html>
>
> Ted
>
>
>
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>
Well, while I agree, that still seems to leave it fairly undefined. It seems to me to be a fairly abstract term which agrees, throughout the ages, with a certain "something" which isn't properly talked about or defined. I still see the spectre of the "ideal ego <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_ideal>" here... And since Freud we should surely see this as the necessary illusion that it is.