In this brief history, philosopher Nicholas White reviews 2,500 years of philosophical thought about happiness. Addresses key questions such as: What is happiness? Should happiness play such a dominant role in our lives? How can we deal with conflicts between the various things that make us happy? Considers the ways in which major thinkers from antiquity to the modern day have treated happiness: from Plato’s notion of the harmony of the soul, through to Nietzsche’s championing of conflict over harmony. Relates (...) questions about happiness to ethics and to practical philosophy. (shrink)

This article examines happiness as an activity, modeled on pleasure in NE 10, 1-5. Aristotle is not proposing a choice, but defining the formal nature of happiness. Contemplation, as the activity of wisdom, constitutes happiness in the strict and formal sense. It has all the attributes of happiness, highest, most continuous, most pleasant, most self-sufficient, leisured, and an end in itself. Practical virtues are formally secondary, as including elements outside the activity of the best part and having leisure as their (...) end. Thus, amusements, practical activities and contemplation are integrated in the life of the sage, the contribution of each formally defined. (shrink)

In the historiography of Classical Greek ethics over the last two hundred years, and in the employment of Greek ideas by modern philosophers, one story has been standard. Greek ethics, it says, espouses a kind of eudaimonism that Ishall call harmonizing eudaimonism. This story seems to me quite wrong, but it is now so firmly rooted that scarcely anyone ever thinks of questioning it.

Many recent interpretations of ancient ethics have been devised with systematic philosophical intentions. Their purpose is to tell us not merely what ancient philosophers thought, but what we ought to think. This is true of recent efforts to interpret Aristotle's views about eudaimonia. The interpretation in question I label "inclusivist" and "pluralist". It treats happiness as consisting of a plurality of "parts" or "constituents". These "parts of happiness" are thought of mainly as "activities," in accordance with Aristotle's statement in Nicomachean (...) Ethics I.7 that happiness is "activity of the soul in accordance with virtue." This interpretation assumes that Aristotle's word "activity" here can be taken to cover a compound activity which has various activities as constituents. I shall point out difficulties in the philosophical ideas that fund it. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: The Idea of a Single Measure An Approach to Hedonism in the Gorgias Hedonism in the Protagoras Aristotelian Pleasure Epicurean Hedonism Bentham and Systematic Quantitative Hedonism From Antiquity through Bentham Problems in Deliberating about Pleasure Some Problems for Quantitative Hedonism Problems for Systematization, Hedonist and Otherwise.

Book VII describes a point at which Plato's future rulers have completed their philosophical education. At that point they have a complete grasp of evaluative concepts (esp. of good), in that they can articulate and defend defi nitions of them against all objections. Immediately, without further training, they are charged with applying these concepts in their city. By contrast, Aristotle's ethical and political writings do not envisage any such point. This difference between Plato and Aristotle is no expository accident, but (...) refl ects a fundamental disagreement between their respective views of the relationship between grasping and applying concepts, especially evaluative concepts. Aristotle's view is importantly similar to Wittgenstein's later view of 'how to go on' using a word 'in the same way'. This paper explores some aspects of this similarity between Aristotle's and Wittgenstein's opposition to platonism. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Where We Start Where to Go from Where We Start Extensions of Happiness: A Brief Digression A Single Evaluation Platonic Harmony Change and Harmony A Fondness for Conflict But How to Harmonize? Challenges to Happiness.

This chapter contains section titled: Outline: the Development of Dynamic Structure Platonic Structures of Harmony and Nature Aristotelian Nature Stoic Attitude Developments since Antiquity The Kantian Critique of the Concept of Happiness Dynamic Conceptions.

This chapter contains section titled: Discovering Happiness Some Agreement about Happiness and Some Disagreement Empiricism, Science, and Policy Measurement: Happiness and Other Concepts Obstacles to Empiricism about Happiness.

The prelims comprise: Half Title Title Copyright Contents Preface.

This chapter contains section titled: Plural and Conflicting Aims Note.

This chapter contains section titled: Happiness and Morality The Conflict in Antiquity Later Obstacles to the Articulation and Explanation of the Conflict Pre‐Kantian Modern Articulations of the Conflict The Kantian Articulation of the Conflict Plato and Kant Compared Reactions to Kant and to the Conflict The Fragmentation of the Concept?

This chapter contains sections titled: Note.

This chapter, which analyses Plato's thinking about ethics and his engagement with it, first reviews his earlier works and asks why neither of them address ethical questions. It then turns to Plato's classical works, particularly the Republic, which suggest a definite ethical position, arguing that they, like his earlier works, are best regarded as often exploring questions rather than as always propounding doctrine.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Some Differences Between Plato and Descartes Plato's Opposition to Perspectivism Conditions on Knowledge and Understanding The Understanding of Terms Perception and Perspective Thesis 3: the Contrast Between Being and Appearing Thesis 2 and Plato's Ontology Notes References and Recommended Reading.