UNIT 4_HUMAN FLOURISHING

• HUMAN BEING - A man, woman, or child of the species Homo sapiens, distinguished from other animals by superior mental development, power of articulate speech, and upright stance.
• According to Aristotle, man is defined as a rational animal.
• Man is a creature whose destiny is to live in the spiritual world and physical world.
• Human flourishing - is defined as an effort to achieve self-actualization and fulfillment within the context of a larger community of individuals, each with the right to pursue his or her own such efforts.
• Human flourishing involves the rational use of one's individual human potentialities, including talents, abilities, and virtues in the pursuit of his freely and rationally chosen values and goals.
• PLATO and ARISTOTLE: Two of the most recognized Greek Philosophers that tries to

  answer the question. These great philosophers called flourishing life as “EUDAIMONIA”; it is usually associated with HAPPINESS. For them, happiness is the result of () or human flourishing.
• Eudaimonia, also spelled - eudaemonia, in Aristotelian ethics, the condition of human flourishing or of living well.
• Eudaimonia sometimes is translated from the original ancient Greek as welfare, sometimes flourishing, and sometimes as well-being
• The concept of Eudaimonia comes from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, his philosophical work on the ‘science of happiness’
• Socrates - believed that virtue (or arête, the very idea of virtue) was a form of knowledge specifically, a knowledge of good and evil. That is, he saw numerous virtues justice, piety, courage as united. That is, all were one, and they were all knowledge.
• Socrates viewed this knowledge as required for us as humans to achieve the ‘ultimate good’, which was eudaimonia. And by ‘us’, Socrates meant the individual.
• Plato - believed that individuals naturally feel unhappiness when they do something they know and acknowledge to be wrong. Eudaimonia, according to Plato, was the highest and ultimate aim of both moral thought and behavior/virtuous action.
• VIRTUE – trait or quality that is deemed to be morally good.
• There are four aspects of Human nature according to Aristotle.

  1. Physical
  2. Emotional
  3. Social
  4. Rational
• A virtuous life can be attained through education and habit.
• In summary, when an individual possesses INTELLECTUAL VIRTUE and VIRTUES OF

  CHARACTER, he or she will attain EUDAIMONIA or HUMAN FLOURISHING.
• Intellectual virtue - is an excellent personal trait or character strength that

  is deemed to be morally good for thinking and learning and is often associated with knowledge and cognitive ability.
• TWO (2) TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE:

  1. Theoretical knowledge
  2. Practical knowledge
• Theoretical knowledge - This type of knowledge is about the nature of the principle.
• Practical knowledge - This is the knowledge of applying principles
• Aristotle defines virtuous character in Nicomachean Ethics II.6: Excellence [of character], then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom (phronimos) would determine it. Now it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.
• ELEVEN (11) VIRTUOUS TRAITS:

  • Courage
  • Temperance
  • Liberality
  • Magnificence
  • Magnanimity
  • Patience
  • Truthfulness
  • Wittiness
  • Friendliness
  • Justice
  • Shame
• Intellectual Virtues + Virtues of Character = Eudaimonia or Human Flourishing