As with Socrates, he saw virtue as integral to eudaimonia. Nonetheless, while Plato was believed somewhat to have refined the concept, he offered no direct definition for it. Eudaimonia, according to Plato, was the highest and ultimate aim of both moral thought and behavior. In a somewhat similar vein, Plato believed that individuals naturally feel unhappiness when they do something they know and acknowledge to be wrong (Price, 2011). And by ‘us’, Socrates meant the individual (Waterman, 1993 Deci & Ryan, 2006). Socrates viewed this knowledge as required for us as humans to achieve the ‘ultimate good’, which was eudaimonia. That is, all were one, and they were all knowledge. That is, he saw numerous virtues-justice, piety, courage as united. Socrates, like Plato, believed that virtue (or arête, the very idea of virtue) was a form of knowledge-specifically, a knowledge of good and evil (Bobonich, 2010). Prior to this, however, Athenian philosophers such as Socrates and Plato (Aristotle’s mentor) were already entertaining similar concepts. The latter also appears in various related forms in contemporary literature, such as the idea of a dæmon as one’s soul in Philip Pullman’s bestselling Northern Lights (Oxford Dictionaries, 2019).Īs noted, the concept of Eudaimonia can be traced back to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. If it helps to provide more context, eudaimonia is a combination of the prefix eu (which means good, or well), and daimon (which means spirit) (Gåvertsson, n.d.). “…wellbeing is not so much an outcome or end state as it is a process of fulfilling or realizing one’s daimon or true nature-that is, of fulfilling one’s virtuous potentials and living as one was inherently intended to live.”Īs there are so many different ways to translate the term into English, it may even be helpful to look at the etymology. We’ll look at this idea of ‘the science of happiness’ a little more closely later in this article.Įudaimonia is about individual happiness according to Deci and Ryan (2006: 2), it maintains that: The concept of Eudaimonia comes from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, his philosophical work on the ‘science of happiness’ (Irwin, 2012). Sometimes it is translated from the original ancient Greek as welfare, sometimes flourishing, and sometimes as wellbeing (Kraut, 2018). In its simplest (translated) form, eudaimonia is often taken to mean happiness (Deci & Ryan, 2006 Huta & Waterman, 2014 Heintzelman, 2018). Eudaimonic vs Hedonic: What’s the Difference?.9 Eudaimonic Activities to Promote Human Flourishing.Eudaimonic Wellbeing Scale and Questionnaire (PDF).
The Philosophy Behind Aristotle’s Ethics.A Look at Aristotle’s Concept of Happiness and Wellbeing.These science-based exercises will explore fundamental aspects of positive psychology including strengths, values, and self-compassion, and will give you the tools to enhance the wellbeing of your clients, students, or employees.
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Most significantly, through its implications for subjective wellbeing.īefore you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Positive Psychology Exercises for free. In this article, we’ll look at Aristotle’s definition of Eudaimonia and its significant influence on the way ‘happiness’ and ‘wellbeing’ are viewed in positive psychology.
It’s simultaneously both less and more prescriptive and dives quite deeply into the ideas of virtues and virtue ethics. That reason being, eudaimonia has the whole element of subjectivity built into it. There are a million different ways to define happiness.Įspecially in the field of psychology, where operational definitions are a constant work in progress.Įudaimonia is not only one of the oldest, but it has stood the test of time for another reason.
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