Can we estimate in any way about how happy these people were?
I doubt there's an objective measure, but I feel like how to be happy and to live a good life are among of the main goals of philosophy. Are they? Did many of them succeed?
I doubt there's an objective measure, but I feel like how to be happy and to live a good life are among of the main goals of philosophy. Are they? Did many of them succeed?
> He habitually dined well, at a good restaurant; he had many trivial love-affairs, which were sensual but not passionate; he was exceedingly quarrelsome and unusually avaricious. ... It is hard to find in his life evidences of an virtue except kindness to animals ... In all other respects he was completely selfish. It is difficult to believe that a man who was profoundly convinced of the virtue of asceticism and resignation would never have made any attempt to embody his convictions in his practice.
Afaik Socrates was saying something about philosophy being the quest for finding out what is "good" and then trying to "reach" it, so nothing directly related to happiness. I'm not a philosopher by any means but I found this description about what philosophy should be as the one closest to the truth. Also, as a pseudo-Kantian I also think that philosophy should have the task of teaching us about our sense of "duty" when pursuing said "good".
Putting the two above concepts together you could say that "inquiring what good is and then trying to pursue and reach it out of a sense of innate duty" is what a "good life" should be, so in that respect I think you're correct.