From: Elizaphanian (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Tue Jun 17 2003 - 10:45:12 BST
Hi Johnny,
> OK. OK, I'm back. I was going more by that post of the 'levels of love',
> where love is described as evolving away from social love (role-based love)
> to a 'personal love' based on eudaimonia. I then looked up Eudiamonia and
> found: "a theory that the highest ethical goal is happiness and personal
> well-being." That does look to me like self-interest, still.
>
> I'm happy that the Greeks and Sam describe it more as 'the good life',
> 'living well', and 'human flourishing,' as that seems to refer to society as
> a whole and living a moral, virtuous life for human fourishing's sake. But
> 'personal' - that doesn't seem to refer to society as a whole at all. So
> the confusion I had distinguishing eudiamonia and 'self-interest' isn't hard
> to understand, it seems the m-w.com dictionary has it too. I'm not sure how
> Sam would prevent this confusion without having m-w.com drop the whole
> 'personal' thing and put it back to Aristotle's /activity according to
> excellence', which is where we were before with morality (just not, uh,
> *intellectually* enunciated).
Please have a look at the discussion of what 'eudaimonia' is in my essay..."Aristotle tells us that
it is equivalent, in ordinary discourse, to 'living well and doing well'. Most Greeks would
understand eudaimonia to be something essentially active, of which praiseworthy activities are not
just productive means, but actual constituent parts...."
Sam
"Phaedrus is fascinated too by the description of the motive of 'duty toward self' which is an
almost exact translation of the Sanskrit word 'dharma', sometimes described as the 'one' of the
Hindus. Can the 'dharma' of the Hindus and the 'virtue' of the Ancient Greeks be identical?" - The
Eudaimonic MoQ says yes. "Lightning hits!"
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