Can happiness be a pathos?

On 03/24/2022 Grant Sterling posted this message to the International Stoic Forum in answer to Nigel Glassborow.

Nigel:

    It is not a reasonable expectation that everyone on this List reads

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.  It is not necessary that everyone on

this List reads the collections of Stoic writings such as Long and Sedley,

or reads accounts of ancient Stoicism such as those of Long, although

regular posters usually do so.  It is a reasonable expectation, though,

that people responding to messages from others take a little time to

try to read the background posts cited by those people, especially when

those posts come from someone like me who has repeated the ideas many

times over the years.  (Note that I am not suggesting that anyone needs to

_agree_ with those posts, only that common courtesy and an effort to engage

in dialogue raises the expectation of trying to _understand_ posts that you

are responding to.)

    So I will try for the thousandth time to say this....


    Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, says that eudaimonia _means_ "living

well and acting well", and from the rest of the text we can see that he means

something like "enjoying one's life" ("living well") and acting in appropriate/

virtuous ways ("acting well").  Note that he is not putting this forward as a

theory, he is asserting that this is what the Greek word "eudaimonia" means

(in his day and age).  Further, he asserts that everyone, both philosophers

and ordinary people alike, agree that this is what the word means, and

furthermore they agree that this is the ultimate aim of life for everyone.  (I might

add that Aristotle is also clear that eudaimonia is an enduring state, a description

of a life or a large part of a life, not a momentary thing.)

    Now perhaps Aristotle was wrong.  But I think that it is patently ridiculous

for anyone living today to claim to have a better understanding of what the

ancient Greeks meant by "eudaimonia" (or any other word in their language)

than Aristotle did.  So let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Aristotle

was right.  (Again, right in his claim about how people used the word and what

they thought about it--I'm not suggesting that we need to believe his own

substantive philosophical theories.)

    Zeno of Citium was a younger contemporary of Aristotle, so there is no

reason to suppose that he understood the word differently from the way

Aristotle understood it.  He may have (and did) disagree with Aristotle about

exactly how to achieve eudaimonia, but there is no reason to think that he

disagreed about the meaning of the word.  While it is theoretically possible that he

could have disagreed with Aristotle's claim that everyone has eudamonia as their

highest goal in life, the evidence is clear that he did agree.  Zeno and the early Stoics

agreed that eudaimonia was the goal of life.

   

    You yourself, Nigel, gave us a link to an article which contained the claim that

Stoic Ethics was plausible in the context of Stoic Physics and Logic.  But, interestingly,

the VERY BEGINNING of the "Ethics" section of that article reads:

     "In many ways, Aristotle’s ethics provides the form for the adumbration of the ethical

teaching of the Hellenistic schools. One must first provide a specification of the goal or end

(telos) of living. This may have been thought to provide something like the dust jacket blurb

or course description for the competing philosophical systems – which differed radically over

how to give the required specification.

    A bit of reflection tells us that the goal that we all have is happiness or flourishing (eudaimonia)."


    It then goes on to show different statements like "living in accord with Nature" were not

rival accounts of the highest goal, but were elucidations of what kind of life the life of

eudaimonia looked like.  (Notice that this means that if you deny that we should seek

eudaimonia, not only are you denying the first principle of Stoic Ethics, but you

eliminate any support from the ancient Stoics for the claim that Physics and Logic are

necessary for Ethics--if Physics and Logic were necessary for eudaimonistic Ethics,

that is no proof that they would be necessary for a non-Stoic non-eudaimonistic Ethics.)


    But perhaps the author of that article got this wrong.  (I myself have criticized his

interpretation of Stoicism in other places.)  How about the VERY FIRST PASSAGE in

the "The End and Happiness" section of Long and Sedley?

    "They [the Stoics] say that being happy is the end, for the sake of which everything

is done, but which is not itself done for the sake of anything." 

    Indeed, I am not aware of any scholar of Stoicism who denies that the ancient Stoics

thought that eudaimonia was the ultimate goal of life.  So when you say that you

reject "This theory of Grant's" and when you say that "The Stoic take is not that everyone

wants to be happy", then you are adopting an interpretation of the ancient Stoics which is

radically at odds with the interpretation of every serious scholar that I know of.  Now

maybe you're right and all the rest of us are wrong, but you owe it to the people on the

List to make it clear to them that you're offering a fringe theory of Stoicism.  Certainly

you should not adopt a tone of scorn when other people assert the standard version

of Stoic theory.

    Or, perhaps, you merely mean that you think that the Stoics _should have_ adopted

the position you advocate.  That's fine, too--I sometimes assert that I think that the

Stoics would have been better served to defend views other than the ones they chose,

as for example when I have claimed that the Stoics ought not to have been so strict about

the idea that it is impossible for anyone but the Sage to have _any_ "good feelings" or

_any_ Virtue.  But I try to go out of my way to point out when I am offering a revisionist

theory.


    In any case, your heading as well as your other comments make it clear that you have

not done serious research into ancient Greek philosophy, contrary to your claims.

"Happiness" (when it is understood as a translation of eudaimonia, as you accept in your

post) is not a feeling, and so it cannot be a pathos.  That's like asking "Can a herd be a buffalo?"

A buffalo could in principle be a part of a herd, but a herd cannot be a buffalo.  Feelings

are part of eudaimonia, but eudaimonia cannot be an individual feeling.  Furthermore,

eudaimonia is _by definition_ a good state, and a pathos is _by definition_ bad.  So your

question is more like "Can Health be a disease?"

    You point out, correctly, that the pursuit of happiness often leads people into all sorts

of problems.  True enough.  Aristotle and the Stoics would completely agree.  But that

doesn't mean that we don't all (even the Sage) pursue it--that only shows that those

people were mistaken about how to get it.  That's precisely the point of Stoic theory--to

teach people how to _rationally_ pursue eudaimonia, so that they can actually succeed

in getting it rather than being mired in pathos and Vice.

    You also claim that 'wanting is a form of desire'.  I don't think that's necessarily so

(the English word "want" is sometimes used more broadly than "desire"), but even if that

were true it wouldn't matter.  There's nothing wrong with desiring a _good_ (and not merely

preferred) thing that is _in our control_.  Eudaimonia is good (indeed, the highest good),

and on the Stoic view is in our control, since Joy and the other Good Feelings are a

necessary counterpart to Virtue.  (This is another way in which your view that our

feelings have their origin outside our judgment causes problems, because if that is

true that it is not in our control whether we have positive or negative feelings.)


    Sincerely,

            GCS