2 - Eudaimonia in contemporary virtue ethics

Summary

Eudaimonia and virtue ethics are interwoven, many extant virtue-ethical theories being eudaimonist, and many (perhaps most) extant eudaimonist theories being virtue-ethical. The explanation for this is partly historical: the articles that heralded the mid-twentieth-century renewal of interest in the virtues – paradigmatically Anscombe's “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958) – did not endorse virtue ethics per se, but rather a return to the broadly eudaimonist and virtue-ethical framework of ancient Greek philosophers. Other non-eudaimonist virtue ethicists soon sought to establish their own non-eudaimonist virtue-ethical views, at which point they felt it appropriate to note that virtue ethics is in fact a genus, of which eudaimonist virtue ethics turns out to be just one species (e.g. Swanton 2003: 1; Slote 2010b). Yet despite its ubiquity in, and importance to, contemporary virtue ethics literature, eudaimonia is discussed far more often than the word is defined or the concept fully articulated. In this chapter, I will discuss the role of eudaimonia in contemporary virtue ethics, and propose an account of what makes a view eudaimonist.

AN ANCIENT-INSPIRED UNDERSTANDING OF EUDAIMONIA

The notion of eudaimonia was introduced into the contemporary virtue ethics literature by philosophers who work in ancient philosophy and who are familiar with the work of ancient eudaimonists. (I will follow convention in calling the former group “ancient philosophers”, to distinguish them from the ancient eudaimonists – Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and so on.)