Abstract: Abstract What is a good life? How do we become happy? These are questions of perennial concern to human beings, questions that we encounter today in all sorts of public and private discourse. One of the distinguishing marks of ancient ethics from Socrates to Augustine is precisely that it places the concept of happiness (eudaimonia, felicitas, beatitudo) and the good life at the centre of ethical thought. This book focuses on different parts and features of the ancient discussion. After a substantial introduction, the fourteen chapters move from the Pre-Socratics through Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic schools down to the Neoplatonists and Augustine in late antiquity. The result is a highly nuanced picture of ancient thought on happiness, displaying continuities as well as differences and development. Central topics include the very concept of happiness, as well as the relationship between happiness and the divine, happiness as an objective quality of a life (e.g. success) versus happiness as some kind of subjective experience (pleasure, tranquillity), happiness versus morality and the virtues, and the roles of reason and of community in happiness. While focusing primarily on interpreting ancient texts, the book will also be of relevance for contemporary thought, where ‘happiness’ or ‘the quality of life’ has become an object of study in many different fields—psychology, economics, sociology, and in systematic philosophy.
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-10-01
Language: en
Type: book
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 20
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