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The first is the concept of eudaimonia, usually translated as 'happiness' or 'flourishing' and occasionally as 'well-being'. Each translation has its disadvantages. The trouble with 'flourishing' is that animals and even plants can flourish, but eudaimonia is only possible for ratinoal beings. The trouble with 'happiness', on any contemporary understanding of it uninfluenced by classically trained writers, is that it connotes something subjective. It is for me, not for you, to pronounce on whether or not I am happy, or on whether my life, as a whole, has been a happy one, and barring, prehaps, cases of advanced self-deception and the suppression of unconscious misery, if I think I am happy, then I am-it is not something I can be wrong about. Contrast my being healthy, or flourishing,. Here we have no difficulty in recognizing that I might think that I was healthy, either physically or psychologically, or think that I was flourishing, and just be mistaken. In this respect, 'flourishing' is a better translation of eudaimonia than 'happiness' . It is all too easy for me to be mistaken about whether or not my life is eudaimon, not simply because it is easy to decieve oneself, but because it is easy to have the wrong conception of eudaimonia, believing it to consist largely in pleasure, for example. 'Well-being' is also a better translation than 'happiness' in this respect, but its disadvantages are that it is not an everyday ter, and that it lacks a corresponding adjective, which makes for clumsiness.
However, despite the undoubted fact that ‘happiness’ can have this subjective connotation, it does seem that we also have a more objection notion much closer to that of eudaimonia, a notion of ‘true(or real) happiness’, or ‘the sort of happiness worth having’. We tend to say that someone may be happy, though not worth having’. We tend to say that someone may be happy, though not truly happy, if they are living in a fool’s paradaise, or engaged in what we know is pointless activity, or brain-damaged and leading the life of a happy child. When we hope that our children will grow up to be happy and have happy lives, we hope for more than that they will lie around all day in a drug-induced haze of contentment.
The second is the concept of a virtue (or vice) itself. Suppose someone were described as having the virtue of honesty. What would we expect them to be like?
Most obviously we expect reliability in their actions; they do not lie or cheat or plagiarize or casually pocket other people’s possessions. You can rely on them to tell you the truth, to give sincere references, to own up to their mistakes, not to pretend to be more knowledgeable than they are; you can buy a used car from them or ask for their opinion with confidence. In thinking about virtues, many people stop here-or indeed, rather earlier, with just a couple of examples-and are thereby led to describe the virtues as no more than mere tendencies to act in certain ways, perhaps in accordance with a rule. |