A meaning to life: Part 2 - Eudaimonia, enrichment and flourishing

Last post we refined our question on the meaning of life to the following:  

Meanlife: What is a / the purpose o f an individual's existence?

We then ended last post with the HappyAnswer to MeanLife: "The answer to Meanlife is that each human should aim to be happy. The reference to 'purpose' is because it is good for a human to be happy.

Now, I mentioned that there were various kinds of metaphysical concerns around this answer. My interest however is to look at the more practical issues around what happiness means. My aim is to get to a satisfactory analysis to this answer that I can then practically apply in my own life.

Let me first revisit the two readings of happiness that I previously mentioned. The first is around happiness in a hedonistic sense - seeking pleasure. The second is happiness in a flourishing sense - enrichment and eudaimonia. I argued for the latter, but let's take a quick look at the former.

 Hedonism

There are different ways people might get pleasure, but the hedonistic kind if quite specific. It's about the maximising of the 'good feelings' of pleasure beyond all else. We aren't talking here about the pleasure we might get from reading a book in the morning. We're talking about the exact dopomine we're getting from taking drugs or having an orgasm. Hedonism is focussed on that feeling of pleasure regardless of where it comes from. The causation does not matter, and even the epistemology does not matter. 

What's wrong with this? Well in some sense nothing, and in another sense a lot. There's a sense in which its hard to argue against the good feelings. After all, most would say that being happy requires one to feel good - is it a problem to reverse this and say that if one feels good then one is happy? 

Let's consider some objections to happiness = hedonism. The first is an epistemic objection and I'll explain it via a pop culture reference! In the film 'The Matrix' a character discusses how they are satisfied for their brain to be fed false memories and experience, as long as those false memories are experiences are ones in which they are doing well. In essence, they would be happy to be in a situation where their life was a lie, but they were experiencing a lot of pleasure. In my view, this captures some of the essence of hedonism - it's about pleasure above all, which also means pleasure above truth. The hedonist would rather live a false life of pleasure than a real life of pain. Is that a problem? Not obviously, but I do feel like something is going wrong if the answer to 'What is the meaning of life' somehow resolves into a solution where a false life of pleasure becomes the model answer.

I think the epistemic issue expands a bit further when we consider hedonistic committment to things like drugs. The feeling of the high when on drugs may be incredible, but there's a sense of falsity that seems to mimic the Matrix situation. When a drug addict is in a constant sense of craving for their next high, surely they are not in a happy situation - even if their experience of the drug provides this hedonism. 

The other issue worth considering it the causation aspect. It's about considering 'Why am I happy, or why have I derived pleasure? Not to fully go down a naturalistic argument, but I would argue that the pleasure we experience from activities such as sex is because the body wants to encourage certain things that are 'good for you'. In this sense, the pleasure is meant to be some kind of bodily reward mechanism and not something to aspired for in itself. I think this is more relevant when we consider certain drugs which provide chemical highs - there's a sense in which we want to be rewarded the 'natural way' - just hitting the chemicals almost feel cheating as we are getting the reward without doing anything. We should be getting pleasure as a reward for doing good things, not as a prize for a competitition that we've cheated.

I don't think this is a real take down of hedonism, but I wanted to share some intuitions as to why I didn't go down this route. 

Eudaimonia

The Philosopher Aristole describes eudaimonia as the highest human good - and the only good that is desirable in its own sake. Eudaimonia refers the condition of human flourishing and living well, and is sometimes translated as happiness. According to Aristole, every entity has some kind of characteristic function that distinguishes it (also known as its Telos or purpose), with the highest good of a thing being its performance against its Telos. Thus the virtue of a knife is that which enables it to cut well, the virtue of an eye is that which enables good seeing. To Aristotle a person's telos is eudaimonia, and thus eudaimonia defines what human excellence and virtue is meant to mean.

Now Aristotle believes that the telos of man is their ability to reason, and thus achieving eudaimonia is in some sense about being a rational individual. Aristotle connects virtue and rationality together, where he places great praise on gaining intellectual virtues such as theoretical wisdom and rationality, but also places emphasis on moral virtues such as justice and courage. Furthermore, these virtues are not innate talents or specific pieces of knowledge - they are traits that are developed with practice, and reflection throughout ones life. This discussion of course feeds into the theory of 'Virtue Ethics', a form of normative ethics that proposes that encourage us to live virtuously.

That's a lot of exposition, but I think the central point here is that achieving this kind of virtue or flourishing is essential to doing good as a human. It is challenging and requires experience and practice, but is something we should strive for. Note that this assessment of Eudaimonia shares some parallels with what we might call self actualisation which I would see as being achieved through enriching one's life. The goal to achieve these virtues is a goal of self enrichment, where we develop ourself and become better people.

I am therefore proposing that by happiness, I actually mean the striving to achieve Eudaimonia.

A few short objections or concerns to consider before I talk about what this all practically means. I guess the first thought is a simple one - what if Aristotle is wrong. Sure we can broadly understand the idea that the purpose of a knife is to cut, but I might not share the exact intuition that the purpose of a human is to become a moral intellectual. I think the idea that we should develop moral virtues (such as kindness, justice etc) seems plausible if we want to associate goodness and purpose. However it isn't quite clear why theoretical virtues. In a sentence - what does reason have to do with all this? I guess if we are to consider eudaimonia as more about 'reaching my potential' and 'human flourishing' I can see buy that developing my virtues across the board has some value.

The second thought to consider is along the lines of 'what does this have to do with happiness'? Aristotle himself mentions that eudaimonia takes time and that 'a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy'. This is interesting, as I think he's attempting to draw a contrast with hedonistic views of happiness. One does not achieve eudaimonia simply by having short bursts of happiness - it requires time. I think there are two ways to justify the eudaimonia view of happiness. The first is to consider an association between flourishing and happiness, which does seem plausible. Another way is to look at our objections to Hedonism and see if Eudaimonia can address them. 

Let's look at the epistemic objection first, which argues that a hedonistic analysis of happiness would prefer a pleasurable life of lies than a struggling life of truth. Eudaimonist would not need to committ to the same conclusion - as they are open to the idea that happiness may require struggle - after all eudaimonia is something achieved after a life of experience. Furthermore, the eudaimonia places some emphasis on achieving theoretical wisdom and epistemic virtue. It seems plausible that they could avoid the pleasurable life of lies.

Second, we get to the causation based objection. Again, I don't think this is necessarily the best objection, but I do think that the Eudaimonist can respond very effectively. If the Eudaimonist is right, then eudaimonia is what one gets once one has succeeded in achieving a life of virtue, suceeded in self flourishing and enrichment. In this sense, one deserves the satisfaction they get - if they are happy its because they got it through a hard battle through life.

There are additional thoughts as to whether there is a third alternative to happiness, but I won't go into detail here. 

I will end today's post with a new conclusion, another refined answer to Meanlife.

EudaimoniaAnswer:   the answer to Meanlife is that each human should aim for human flourishing - they should leave an enriching life where they can develop theoretical and moral virtue.