I just came across a short piece by Julia Annas, Happiness As Achievement, that does a nice job of introducing the Aristotelean conception of happiness.
"Austro" as in Rothbard and Wittgenstein, "Athenian" as in Aristotle and smashing-the-plutocracy.
About Roderick T. Long
The Empirical Me
I’m Roderick T. Long, Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. I’m an Aristotelean/Wittgensteinian in philosophy and a left-libertarian market anarchist in social theory. (More about me here.) This blog, Austro-Athenian Empire, is a continuation of my earlier blog, archived here.
Go Julia! Also check out her recent piece on the phenomenology of virtue. Then, I’d be really interested to see your take on it.
Here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/q47r0p2n14438121/
What an awesome paper. Doesn’t this sort of argument strengthen the case for updating Rothbard’s praxeology? I mean, where does he leave room for understanding eudaimonia? If happiness is objective and entails achievement, what category of action points to this mode of behavior?
Voluntary interpersonal exchange on the unhampered market would allow understanding eudaimonia. But it doesn’t rule out ignoring eudaimonia. If all states fell today, most people would still, more than likely, operate through subjective notions of happiness–even states of happiness that other people could bring about for them.
So isn’t understanding eudaimonia logically prior to successful long-term exchange on the unhampered market? And if that’s the case, shouldn’t we add another category of human action to praxeology?
I would love to get a pdf copy of “The Phenomenology of Virtue” and some of Annas’s other works, but unfortunately I don’t have easy access to a university library at the moment. Roderick, could you scan it (some) for me?
Kevin, is there a free version of that paper?
See this piece of mine.
So you think it would be useful to amend the categories and add something like reflective equilibration or dialogue towards the unity of virtue?