Eudaimonia (Happiness)

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  • Happiness, the goal of life for nearly every ancient school. For Epicurus a happy life is a life in which pleasure predominates over pain. The noun does not appear in the Principal Doctrines; where the idea is meant, they speak of the "blessed" (makarios). See Happiness Is the Goal of Life.

    Greek εὐδαιμονία (eudaimonia); Latin beata vita

    Happiness, the goal of life for nearly every ancient school. For Epicurus a happy life is a life in which pleasure predominates over pain. The noun does not appear in the Principal Doctrines; where the idea is meant, they speak of the "blessed" (makarios). See Happiness Is the Goal of Life.

    1. Key Texts

    Quote from Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus 122

    Let no one either delay philosophizing when young, or weary of philosophizing when old. For no one is under-age or over-age for health of the soul. To say either that the time is not yet ripe for philosophizing, or that the time for philosophizing has gone by, is like saying that the time for happiness either has not arrived or is no more. So both young and old must philosophize -- the young man so that as he ages he can be made young by his goods, through his thankfulness for things past, the old man so that he can be at once young and aged, through his fearlessness towards things future, Therefore we must rehearse the things which produce happiness, seeing that when happiness is present we have everything, while when it is absent the one aim of our actions is to have it. (tr. Long & Sedley)

    2. See Also

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