A defense of aristotelian eudaimonia

Abstract

In Two Conceptions of Happiness, Richard Kraut denounces the inhumanity and restrictiveness of Aristotelian eudaimonia. This article offers a critique of Kraut's assessment. The first part of the article, of an exegetical nature, disputes Kraut's intellectualist interpretation of eudaimonia and proposes a dualist reading of it that seeks to resolve the major problems of the classic debate between inclusivists and intellectualists. The second part of the article, in turn, defends a form of objectivism against the subjective conception of happiness expounded by Kraut: first, by arguing that Kraut’s accusations apply to both eudaimonia and his subjective conception of happiness – the difference being that the latter cannot deal with cases of “happy” vicious behavior that are, in a eudaimonic conception, easily dismissed; second, by demonstrating that Kraut’s subjectivism is, in fact, a veiled objectivism: in his attempt to go beyond a merely psychological conception of happiness, Kraut was forced to normatively enrich the concept of happiness with criteria that go beyond the determinations of the subject. We therefore conclude that Aristotelian eudaimonia continues to provide us with the only capable alternative to a purely psychological view of happiness, and is therefore still relevant in the ethical debate.