How to flourish with Aristotle

Part XXVIII of the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series

[Based on How to Flourish: An Ancient Guide to Living Well, by Aristotle, translated by Susan Sauvé Meyer. Full book series here.]

The big question in philosophy that started with Socrates was: how should we live? In Ancient Greek, a life that goes well was called eudaimonic. It’s a tricky word to translate, but positive psychologists and even policy makers now use it, because they realize that just counting a country’s GDP doesn’t tell us much about how happy people are.

According to the ancient Greeks, when someone’s eudaimon, they’re reaching their full potential as humans. Aristotle’s answer to what makes us eudaimon is straightforward: flourishing.

Susan Sauvé Meyer, who translated parts of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics under the title How to Flourish (part of Princeton Press’ Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readersseries), says that the King James Version of the Bible renders the word makarios, which is similar to eudaimonia, as “blessed.” So, Aristotle basically asks what makes someone blessed and answers that being blessed means flourishing.

Aristotle was born in 384 BCE in Macedon, north of Greece. He came from an aristocratic family, and his dad was the royal family’s doctor. When he was…