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Full Idea
Those who say that a man who is being tortured and has suffered terrible calamities is happy if he is a good man are willy-nilly talking nonsense.
Clarification
'Happy' is the Greek word 'eudaimon', also sometimes translated as 'flourishing'
Gist of Idea
It is nonsense to say a good person is happy even if they are being tortured or suffering disaster
Source
Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1153b19)
Book Ref
Vlastos,Gregory: 'Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher' [CUP 1992], p.224
A Reaction
Someone expressed this extreme idea, and the Stoics sympathised with it. Happiness is life going well. Making a supreme sacrifice for an enormous good seems like life going well.
| 5138 | The fine deeds required for happiness need external resources, like friends or wealth [Aristotle] |
| 38 | A man can't be happy if he is ugly, or of low birth, or alone and childless [Aristotle] |
| 1665 | It is nonsense to say a good person is happy even if they are being tortured or suffering disaster [Aristotle] |
| 5871 | Goods in the soul are more worthy than those outside it, as everybody wants them [Aristotle] |
| 1829 | A wise man would be happy even under torture [Epicurus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 5073 | Stoics do not despise external goods, but subject them to reason, and not to desire [Taylor,R on Stoic school] |
| 20862 | Crafts like music and letters are virtuous conditions, and they accord with virtue [Stoic school, by Stobaeus] |
| 13549 | Nothing bad can happen to a good man [Seneca] |