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Comment by harimau777 | Hacker News Reader

It seems to me that this either underemphasizes the importance of happiness or assumes that happiness will be an inevitable byproduct of virtue; even if we define happiness very broadly to include things like "satisfaction" or a "sense of purpose".

Part of me suspects that may be because Aristotle was likely upper class and therefore already had success and/or wealth. I'm not sure that I think his arguments work for people who are suffering or struggling to get by.

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The article says directly: “One might even suffer greatly and still live a virtuous—that is: a good—life. When Aristotle speaks of a “happy” life, he means a fulfilled or flourishing life rather than a pleasurable one.”

Suffering certainly does make it harder to be virtuous, but you can interpret that not as disregarding the poor but as giving even more justification for orienting society toward satisfying everyone’s basic needs.

Idea: Web page of every phrase in (Koine) greek that meant different thing to the ancient great philosophers than in English language today. This'd help to get a good picture of the Greeks at once for one usually stumbles upon the "different interpretations" slowly.

There are these books:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Greek-Philosophical-Terms-Historica...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Greek-Philosophical-Vocabulary-J-Ur...

I have the second one, which I found useful when studying ancient Greek philosophy in English translation.

I will have to make an analysis of regular expressions of heuristically most useful & heuristically highest quality academic source materials.

Koine greek postdates Plato, Aristotle and Socrates by around 200 years.

To go even farther, virtue, to any notable extent, only accumulates under hardship.

There’s very little virtue to be had in enduring insults when living in a palace, and waited on hand and foot by servants, but quite notable to endure insults when living in severe hardship.

I think that’s a more Christian interpretation. I don’t think Aristotle would go that far.

> I'm not sure that I think his arguments work for people who are suffering or struggling to get by.

    Here lies Epictetus,
    a slave maimed in body, 
    the ultimate in poverty,
    and the favored of the gods.

I see that someone has already mentioned him in this thread, but his epitaph is a direct address to your doubt.

Yes, Aristotle was born into a more privileged family, but I'm not sure if it's accurate to say that he was rich. However, his financial conditions and the fame that his life's work brought him seem to have had the opposite effect of what you suggested. There is a painting by Rembrandt that represents exactly this. The painting depicts Aristotle with one hand holding a chain of gold and the other hand resting on a bust of Homer. This represents his internal struggle between embracing his eternal legacy, like Homer, or embracing momentary pleasures and riches.

It’s an allegorical painting by Rembrandt, nothing more.

Statements that end in "nothing more" are almost always incorrect. The only way one could make such a statement with total certitude would be to be omniscient, as the phrase implies an exhaustive understanding of all possible facts.

Yeah because Rembrandt had all the facts on Aristotle. Spitting image of the chap that painting.

But he certainly may have more knowledge on Aristotle than you.

Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher and proponent of Aristotelian virtue ethics, was literally a slave. Some ideas, particularly the best ones, aren't subject to class politics.

> Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher and proponent of Aristotelian virtue ethics, was literally a slave. Some ideas, particularly the best ones, aren't subject to class politics.

While correct, it should be noted that he was only a slave during his youth (freed around the age of 18 when Nero died) and was a slave to the secretary of Nero, in other words had a personal connection to Imperial power.

Yeah an aristocrat greek being slave in Rome doesn't change his high social class status. It just means he worked for room and board for a while. Often as teacher and administrative leaders. Anything written by anyone before the XIX century CE can be assumed to having been written by a high social class individual.

Happiness and sadness are emotions - inherently transient.

I have actually thought that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" was aan error, and should have been "life, liberty, and the pursuit of fulfilment"

Happiness is not an emotion. That was the whole point of the article.

Yes, pursuing happiness is shortsighted.

> It seems to me that this either underemphasizes the importance of happiness or assumes that happiness

Isn't it understood that focusing on trying to make yourself happy will actually make you miserable, and in any case "happiness" tends to revert to the mean fairly quickly?

Happiness is not the goal. You can't control when the mind will be happy, how long that happiness lasts, or even the intensity of the happiness. Instead, the goal should be something we do have more control over. Our reactions to experiences. We can train ourselves to be non reactive no matter what emotions or experiences arise. Non reaction here means mindful observation without being moved to act. That way action becomes a choice rather than an automatic response.

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