PHILOS 2YY3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Eudaimonia
16 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
PHILOS 2YY3 Tutorial – Mar 19 2018
Virtue Ethics (Aristotle and McIntyre)
Aristotle
• All activities seemed aim at some end
o That for the sake of which we do the activity
o The end of bridal makeup – is to get bridals
o End of generalship – is victory and war, or peace
o We ould’t egage i these actiities uless there as a ed to get at
• Is there an end to all human activity?
o Yes, there is a word that we all agree upon that is the end of all of our activity –
HAPPINESS
o All of our actions contribute to a single end in one way or another, and that is
happiness
• Aristotle is being minimalistic on how he draws his definition
o I want happiness, he wants happiness
o People disagree on what they mean about happiness
o But they agree that they want it
o We may be confused of what happiness consists of
• Eudaimonia → happiness
o Translated as flourishing as oppose to just happiness
o Happiness or flourishing
• Maybe we can find out what happiness of humans consist in if we find the characteristic
activity of humans are – function of human
o Ergonomics – deed that is unique to humans
o Analogy – the good or the doing well, of a flute player is to not just play the flute,
but to play it WELL
• Taxonomy of souls
o Soul: that in virtue of which makes you alive, all things that are alive have souls
does’t ea a etity
o Gaining nutrients and reproducing – we share this with all other living things
▪ What we are looking for is something distinctive of human beings
o Brute animals – they have this kind of activity to
▪ Cow does this kind of stuff
• Humans are the only creatures that are rational
o If humans are characteristic in that way, it seems that our characteristic activity
is a life lived in accordance with reason
▪ So, Eudaimonia is an active life of reason, but not just reason but an
active life of reasoning well
▪ Eudaimonia, activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, where virtue is
a being in excellent condition
• Non-human things can have virtue
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
