Chapter 4 - Eudaimonia (Happiness)

Summary

Aristotle links the practice of virtue to the achievement of happiness as both short-term pleasures and a long-term telos. This chapter on eudaimonia concentrates on the ethical dimension of this form of delight as it unfolds in some botanical metaphors in Shakespeare's Henry V and 1 Henry IV. I contextualize Shakespeare's plays with contemporary English Renaissance works in natural philosophy and natural history, which draw from Aristotle's notion of humanity’s tripartite soul to define the good life as dependent on the wellbeing of the civic collective rather than individual growth. In this model, the human spirit shares a lifeforce in common with plants (the nutritive) and animals (the sensitive), while also holding unique access to reason. Delight signals one’s immersion into this vegetative spirit, which functions as the ontological ground of a universal nature that thrives on weedy growth and uncultivated entanglements. At a time when considerations of virtue dominated a range of cultural, ecclesiastical, political, and soteriological theories of human flourishing, Shakespeare keys eudaimonia to the process of moving away from a focus on singular or distinctive excellence to an embrace of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all living things.