Stoic Eudaimonism
Overview
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“The end for which everything is done but which is not itself
done for the sake of anything [summum bonum]” (Long).
The telos [goal/end] in which Stoic ethics finds its purpose
o “Living in agreement [with nature],” “Good flow of life”
(Zeno)
Eudaimonism correctly translate to happiness in an objective
sense [attainment of good/s] and in a subjective sense [a
contented state of mind]
Eudaimonia vs. Happiness
● “A ‘blessed’ or ‘god-favored’ condition
● Both objective features of happiness (attainment of good) and subjective
connotation (content state of mind)
● Not used to describe transient moods or satisfactions, like in English
● A person’s lot or daimon is good, they are flourishing
● Emotional balance is clearly a part of eudaimonia for Long
Standard Features of Eudaimonia
1. “It is what everyone desires”
2. “It results from the acquisition of good things / absence of bad things”
3. “It is what the gods have”
4. “It is profitable”
5. “It involves freedom to do what one wants to do”
6. “It involves living well
7. “It is people’s ultimate objective - no need to ask why someone wants
eudaimonia
● Long says these features would be endorsed by most Greeks
● Long says Stoics aren’t trying to redefine happiness, they agree with these
features
Before Socrates and Plato
● “Secure possession of goods that partly depend on chance - wealth,
health, fame, family success”
○ Difficult to achieve, conditions partly outside human power
○ Pessimists will believe this
● “A person’s modest expectations and moral character”
○ Revisionists will believe this
○ Based more on an individual's power, much more possible to obtain
Socrates, Plato, Epicurus, Aristotle
● “Happiness is either wholly or partly a state and activity of the soul
● “Happiness is either wholly or partly generated by ethical virtue”
○ Ethical virtue is an active state of the soul
● Plato adds pleasure to ethical virtue as parts of happiness
● Aristotle adds external goods to ethical virtue
● Epicurus - ethical virtue is a tool to happiness, pleasure actually constitutes
happiness
● Stoics are unique - happiness is constituted entirely of ethical virtue,
nothing else
● Some claim that Stoic eudaimonism is an extreme version of Aristotelian
eudaimonism simply with a large emphasis on virtue; Long disagrees, he
thinks it’s more complex than that
Socrates/Cynic tradition
● Stoic Eudaimonia seems to share with Socratic/Cynic tradition that “only
one thing is good, namely knowledge or virtue, and only one thing is bad,
namely ignorance or vice”
● “Externals” or “indifferents” only have value in their conjunction with
knowledge
● Goodness/badness and happiness/unhappiness thus depend entirely on
knowledge/virtue or ignorance/vice
Divine Providence & Determinism
1) “a radical intuition concerning ‘nature’ or the
divine government of the world and the
connexion of this government with human
rationality.”
2) “a belief that happiness more or less coincides
with the natural and divine plan for human wellbeing.” (185)
Divine Providence & Determinism
“a belief that happiness more or less coincides with
the natural and divine plan for human wellbeing.”
❏ Socratic/Cynic tradition (186)
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Socrates’ adaptive strategy (Irwin)
❏ telos (i.e. happiness) = ‘living in agreement
with nature’ ?
Divine Providence & Determinism
“a radical intuition concerning ‘nature’ or the
divine government of the world and the
connexion of this government with human
rationality.”
❏ Theocratic postulate (187-8)
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Happiness consists in obedience to Zeus, or divine
universal law
Happiness = accord with virtue + living in
Divine Providence & Determinism
‘Living in agreement with nature’ = “Engaging in
no activity which the common law is wont to forbid, which
is the right reason pervading everything and identical to
Zeus, who directs the organisation of reality. And the
virtue of the happy man and his good flow of life consists
in this: always doing everything on the basis of the
concordance of each man’s guardian spirit (daimon) with
the will of the director of the universe.” (187)
-Chrysippus
Objections to Stoic account of Eudaimonism
Impoverishment objection
● Stoic interpretation/account of happiness does not coincide with features of
happiness [positive emotions, fulfillment of expectations, etc.]
Disingenuousness objection
● Stoic telos equates to happiness only superficially and in purely formal terms
External Perspective of Stoic Happiness
“There is no other or more appropriate way of approaching the theory of good and
bad things or the virtues or happiness than from universal nature and from the
administration of the world” (Chrysippus).
Happiness depends on a “good flow of life” [pattern of activity] in which human
nature agrees with a universal nature by conforming to its governing principles
[rationality], as embodied in the “world animal” [one universal mind and will].
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Humanity as part of a divine world organization
Divine world organization [universe] governed by rational principles
Rationality constitutes our human part in the universal nature
Synthesis of Internal and External Perspectives in
Determinism and Divine Providence
“There was no way, given the antecedent conditions, that life would not be lush in
California and harsh in Ethiopia… It follows that the state of the world at any one
time is the best possible. This may not be apparent from the viewpoint of the
Ethiopians, but if it were possible for a human being to observe the global economy
from the divine perspective, reason would constrain him or her to acknowledge that
fact” (Long 191).