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Eudaimonia, Virtue, and Idealization

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Handbuch Tugend und Tugendethik

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Abstract

How can an ideal of human flourishing reveal what attributes are virtues, as eudaimonism aspires to do, when not all virtuous lives flourish? The standard answer is that even if circumstances prevent one from attaining that idealized life, still one’s life approximates to the ideal the more one’s character approximates to the ideal. However, exploration of methods of idealization reveals that “approximation” is ill-suited to contexts in which factors interact, as virtue and circumstance do. Instead, eudaimonism helps us understand the distinctive excellence of humans by providing a perspective on what is distinctly human about a distinctly human mode of life, namely practical intelligence in making use of one’s circumstances, whatever they may be. This is an alternative understanding of the method of idealization in eudaimonism about virtue, and so the chapter ends with reflections on some uses and limits of idealization in virtue theory.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    All translations are my own. Of course, this speech is Herodotus’ creation, but for simplicity’s sake I will call Solon the speaker.

  2. 2.

    I shall use “well-being” and “flourishing,” interchangeably, for the Greek word eudaimonia, which is notoriously difficult to translate into English. “Happiness” and its cognates would be the most convenient, but this usage is contested (see Russell 2012, ch. 2).

  3. 3.

    NE I.10, 1100a10–17, b30–33, 1101a6–8. I.10 opens with Solon’s maxim to “look to the end” (telos horan, 1100a11), on the grounds that one hasn’t flourished until one has died without serious misfortune (Herodotus, Histories I.32.5), a corollary of his larger views about well-being.

  4. 4.

    To be clear, the present question is not whether one should be virtuous if fortunes are bad, but whether the virtues in one set of life circumstances are the same virtues even in very different life circumstances. The same question is raised by Tessman 2005 (see below, ch. 3.3).

  5. 5.

    The locus classicus is Aristotle, NE I. See also Russell 2012, chs. 1–2, for discussion.

  6. 6.

    Cp. Irwin 1985, ch. 4: the virtuous always have the “dominant” part of eudaimonia, even when misfortune takes eudaimonia away. See Russell 2012, pp. 119–123 for discussion.

  7. 7.

    The same could not yet be said for Croesus, as Herodotus goes on to tell.

  8. 8.

    And Aristotle appreciates that in doing so, Solon made eudaimonia something attainable for the everyday Tellus and not just the extraordinary Croesus (NE I.10, 1179a9–13).

  9. 9.

    Herodotus’ wording is significant: the two grounds of Solon’s assessment are not things Tellus did, but the circumstances that Tellus had (Tellōi touto men … touto de …).

  10. 10.

    Liddell et al. (1843/1996, ad loc.) note that the word daimōn was used to refer not only to a spirit that watches fate, but also to fate or chance itself.

  11. 11.

    On this threefold division of goods in ancient ethics see Inwood 2014.

  12. 12.

    It is a sad irony that Aristotle would later be associated with so-called “objective list” theories of well-being, which are precisely what he rejected. (Some of his successors in the Lyceum might have warranted that label, though; see Russell 2012, 117–119.)

  13. 13.

    Cf. LeBar (2004, pp. 196–201): it’s not enough to stipulate a condition of well-being, if the theory cannot also explain why it should be a condition in the first place.

  14. 14.

    As his sons are said to be: Solon calls them kaloi k’agathoi, which in the Greek idiom blends personal attributes with social status.

  15. 15.

    I leave aside how Aristotle himself understood this idealization; I don’t think we can tell. It is worth noting, though, that in his scientific works anyway, Aristotle appreciates that (what we now call) Galilean idealizations are inappropriate for domains in which factors interact. See Funkenstein 1986, ch. III.C.

  16. 16.

    For discussion of different types of simplifying idealizations that illuminate through resemblance, see Weisberg 2007, and Mäki 2011 expanding on Musgrave 1981.

  17. 17.

    My work on this chapter was supported by the Eudaimonia Institute at Wake Forest University. My thanks to Jim Otteson, Adam Hyde, and everyone at the Institute. Thanks also to Mark LeBar for helpful conversations on the issues discussed in this chapter. And thanks to Felix Timmermann for graciously inviting me to contribute to this volume.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Daniel C. Russell

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  1. Philosophisches Seminar, Universität Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Christoph Halbig

  2. Philosophisches Seminar, Universität Zürich, Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Felix Uwe Timmermann

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Russell, D.C. (2020). Eudaimonia, Virtue, and Idealization. In: Halbig, C., Timmermann, F.U. (eds) Handbuch Tugend und Tugendethik. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-24467-5_3-1

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