Flourishing (Eudaimonia)

[BaalChatzaf]

Question: Is it immoral not to flourish when flourishing is possible? Is there an ethical or moral obligation to flourish given that it is possible to flourish?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

That's an inverted question that totally ignores context. It's like asking if it is immoral not to eat. These things come before volition.

Flourishing is a sign of health and it is a result of choices. It is not a choice in itself. You don't choose, "I will now flourish," or "I will now not not flourish." You choose to do many things, like productive work or stealing from someone or eating good food or crap, etc., and flourishing happens or not, just like health does.

Is it immoral to want to be sick? Let each person answer for himself, but as a standalone question it makes no sense. Choosing illness actually is immoral if consciously chosen against health as a standard of living. But it is a sign of mental disease if the desire is there as emotional distress, i.e. a pathological attitude. Thus a proper judgment depends on including other factors, not simply contextless volition. You can't oversimplify it and make it work.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Question: Is it immoral not to flourish when flourishing is possible? Is there an ethical or moral obligation to flourish given that it is possible to flourish?

Hitler flourished. Was Hitler "moral"?

--Brant

[Mikee]

Question: Is it immoral not to flourish when flourishing is possible? Is there an ethical or moral obligation to flourish given that it is possible to flourish?

Hitler flourished. Was Hitler "moral"?

--Brant

Hitler DID NOT flourish. Unless you think the "life" lived by parasites is "flourishing".

[Dragonfly]

Of course parasites can flourish. That's what makes parasitism so irritating.

[Brant Gaede]

Question: Is it immoral not to flourish when flourishing is possible? Is there an ethical or moral obligation to flourish given that it is possible to flourish?

Hitler flourished. Was Hitler "moral"?

--Brant

Hitler DID NOT flourish. Unless you think the "life" lived by parasites is "flourishing".

If you have a special non-dictionary definition for "flourish" please present and justify it.

--Brant

[Mikee]

"If you have a special non-dictionary definition for "flourish" please present and justify it. "

Ayn Rand's vision of human life is wasted on you isn't it? If you find the life of a Hitler "flourishing" you are welcome to live that life, until you are killed by real men.

[Brant Gaede]

"If you have a special non-dictionary definition for "flourish" please present and justify it. "

Ayn Rand's vision of human life is wasted on you isn't it? If you find the life of a Hitler "flourishing" you are welcome to live that life, until you are killed by real men.

Not flourishing for me. What cowardly, stupid ad hominem.

--Brant

[Mikee]

Brant,

Your reply to me was mean spirited and dully stupid and you got the reply you deserved. This website exists to celebrate the spirit and works of Ayn Rand, not to celebrate the mean spiritedness of elementary school grammerians.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I don't particularly like the term "flourish" because of this kind of misunderstanding.

Obviously striving to be the best in a productive manner is one way of being successful and being physically healthy and socially powerful, although unfair and evil, is another one way of being successful. Both instances have common ground and dissimilarities, yet both can be described by the same word.

There should be a word for each. Still, it is possible to say correctly that "evil can flourish," and it is possible to say that "flourishing is the good life." Context should provide which meaning is used.

This is a great opportunity for people to look at the concept and not the word when evaluating what another means.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

Your reply to me was mean spirited and dully stupid and you got the reply you deserved. This website exists to celebrate the spirit and works of Ayn Rand, not to celebrate the mean spiritedness of elementary school grammerians.

You all but called me Hitler and explicitly invited me to get killed. What kind of reaction did you expect?

--Brant

[Mikee]

"Not flourishing for me."

That's the point I was making. You obviously got it. Why add anything to it?

Sorry Michael. Seems I always get myself in trouble when I post here. I LIKE "flourish" in the context of mans life. Ayn Rand's vision of man.

The original question "Is it immoral not to flourish when flourishing is possible?": If all the conditions for flourishing are there, including desire and ability, only extreme bad luck can prevent flourishing. Bad luck is just bad luck, not immoral.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Mike and Brant,

For the record, I think you both rock...

... in a flourishing kind of way.

Michael

[sbeaulieu]

As always, context is extremely important given that one word can have several meanings. Clarification from the outset is key, as people are given to interpretion in varying degrees. It's what makes us individuals after all ;)

~ Shane

[Ross Barlow]

There can be a lot of disagreement on what is the best path to flourishing for any one single person or even on what “flourishing” actually entails. For these reasons it is not easy to answer Ba’al’s initial questions.

From immediate memory, there are two books that I most highly recommend on this subject.

First there is the book by the late American philosopher David L. Norton (1930-1995), *Personal Destinies: a philosophy of ethical individualism* (1976).

Norton recognizes the vast natural differences among individuals, in their natural temperaments, their strengths and weaknesses, their psychologies, etc., and he counsels that we must each strive to understand our own particular pathways that are best for us and that “fit” us. This is eudaimonia, our individually “truest” or “best” spirit/ potential self. To copy or ape the exact pathways that work well for others is often to betray our own unique natural pathway. An enormous amount of honest self-scrutiny, self-discovery and self-understanding is necessary here. Norton discusses the Aristotelian concept of “eudaimonia” better than most for the enlightenment of the Western reader.

I do not see Norton as a relativist in ethics here. I see him as a thinker who recognizes many truly universal human values and virtues, while at the same time he recognizes the extreme diversity of human individuality and thus the many different pathways and lifestyles that may be most natural and proper for any of us as individuals to take, within the constraints of this universal human nature.

Norton’s book is on my shortlist of the 20 best books I have ever read.

The second book I recommend in this context is Aristotle’s *Nicomachean Ethics.* If you have not read it yet, I urge you to buy a decent compact paperback copy and keep it close at hand to browse through over time. Throw it in your bag when you travel. Keep it close, and it will grow on you.

It is one of the more readable works of Aristotle’s, with more coherence and relevance than many of his works that have survived to be handed down to us. And it is not too long.

One of its virtues is that it has a Topical Table of Contents where each Chapter and Section has a title with enough info to let you know what you will find there – as well as enough info to maybe pique your curiosity for certain sections. This makes it infinitely browsable. Few can plough right through it from start to finish on first picking it up.

After browsing at random through it for some time and getting familiar with some of its terminology, you might one day be ready to read it through. You may be surprised at how similar his ethics are to Rand’s.

Personally, I had been browsing through it randomly for a few years before taking my college class on Ancient Philosophy. During that course I decided to do my term paper on it so I read it through with great delight. If I had to take only one book on an exile to a desert isle, it may well be the *Nicomachean Ethics.*

For those not familiar with it, the word usually translated as “happiness” in English translations of Aristotle is the original Greek word “eudaimonia.” Happiness is a top value in the ethical systems of both Aristotle and Rand.

Ba’al, I still have not really addressed your initial questions, but you got me thinking. If I can get to it later, I would like to comment more.

.

-Ross Barlow.

[BaalChatzaf]

There can be a lot of disagreement on what is the best path to flourishing for any one single person or even on what “flourishing” actually entails. For these reasons it is not easy to answer Ba’al’s initial questions.

From immediate memory, there are two books that I most highly recommend on this subject.

First there is the book by the late American philosopher David L. Norton (1930-1995), *Personal Destinies: a philosophy of ethical individualism* (1976).

Norton recognizes the vast natural differences among individuals, in their natural temperaments, their strengths and weaknesses, their psychologies, etc., and he counsels that we must each strive to understand our own particular pathways that are best for us and that “fit” us. This is eudaimonia, our individually “truest” or “best” spirit/ potential self. To copy or ape the exact pathways that work well for others is often to betray our own unique natural pathway. An enormous amount of honest self-scrutiny, self-discovery and self-understanding is necessary here. Norton discusses the Aristotelian concept of “eudaimonia” better than most for the enlightenment of the Western reader.

I do not see Norton as a relativist in ethics here. I see him as a thinker who recognizes many truly universal human values and virtues, while at the same time he recognizes the extreme diversity of human individuality and thus the many different pathways and lifestyles that may be most natural and proper for any of us as individuals to take, within the constraints of this universal human nature.

Norton’s book is on my shortlist of the 20 best books I have ever read.

The second book I recommend in this context is Aristotle’s *Nicomachean Ethics.* If you have not read it yet, I urge you to buy a decent compact paperback copy and keep it close at hand to browse through over time. Throw it in your bag when you travel. Keep it close, and it will grow on you.

It is one of the more readable works of Aristotle’s, with more coherence and relevance than many of his works that have survived to be handed down to us. And it is not too long.

One of its virtues is that it has a Topical Table of Contents where each Chapter and Section has a title with enough info to let you know what you will find there – as well as enough info to maybe pique your curiosity for certain sections. This makes it infinitely browsable. Few can plough right through it from start to finish on first picking it up.

After browsing at random through it for some time and getting familiar with some of its terminology, you might one day be ready to read it through. You may be surprised at how similar his ethics are to Rand’s.

Personally, I had been browsing through it randomly for a few years before taking my college class on Ancient Philosophy. During that course I decided to do my term paper on it so I read it through with great delight. If I had to take only one book on an exile to a desert isle, it may well be the *Nicomachean Ethics.*

For those not familiar with it, the word usually translated as “happiness” in English translations of Aristotle is the original Greek word “eudaimonia.” Happiness is a top value in the ethical systems of both Aristotle and Rand.

Ba’al, I still have not really addressed your initial questions, but you got me thinking. If I can get to it later, I would like to comment more.

.

-Ross Barlow.

Thank you for seeing the connection between my question and Aristotle's -Nichomachean Ethics-. My apologies for not specifically referencing this work of Aristotle's. Eudaimonia is the Greatest End for any human according to Aristotle. And achieving is is very context dependent. One must practice all the virtues (arete in Greek) and the practice of the virtues is optimized (for each individual) by locating his practice between extremes. Hence Aristotle's principle of the Mean (which is not an average. Rather it is an optimum for that individual). Since Eudaimonia is considered the greatest end in the Aristotelean virtue based system, not achieving it (or not attempting to achieve it) would be considered defective behavior (specifically -akratic- behavior) with regard to Aristotle's ethical system.

My question was addressed to the Objectivist p.o.v. Would failure to achieve the optimum (by refusing to try when it is possible) be considered an ethical or moral defect with respect to the Objectivist system.

Forgive me for not going into the detail I should have. I was running a 100 degrees F. when I posted originally. (No more of that! I promise).

Ba'al Chatzaf