musings, roughly

[Sampson]

eudaimonia, euphoria
(dopamine dream possibly)
but peace seems real enough
even if we're stuck debating love
and function; reason and logic
appealing to the evidence we're
perceiving (possibly dreaming)
it all seems real enough.
who am i to call the physicist's bluff
but the philosophers f*cked with my
psyche perhaps rightly but now i'm
ever so slightly confused having this
existential crisis...

yet as i'm writing i'm realising that
life is
and the questions are built in
so maybe the essence is asking
but why ask when the answer is
so far from your grasp and the gulf
dividing the future and the past is
still parting becoming wider disappearing
leaving a lingering question and
in this moment maybe we find existence
in asking "what the f*ck just happened?"

[Cunninglinguist]

Interesting...

Just a technical point: eudaimonia, in the original sense of the world, is not a state of one's mind, as you seem to insinuate. It's more like a state of a relationship one has with the world; much like peace, in fact. A lot of people don't understand that so they misuse the term. Also, it translates terribly into English.

[everyadventure]

Uh oh, we have a budding philosopher in our midst! You're in deep, buddy, I hope you make it out alive :)

[Sampson]

Cunninglinguist, I'm afraid I have to take issue with your technical point. Eudaimonia can be defined in many different ways; peace is one of them, but happiness is more common I find. Either way, wouldn't you say both are state's of mind? "A state of a relationship that one has with the world" is basically another way of saying this, is it not?

[Cunninglinguist]

Cunninglinguist, I'm afraid I have to take issue with your technical point. Eudaimonia can be defined in many different ways; peace is one of them, but happiness is more common I find. Either way, wouldn't you say both are state's of mind? "A state of a relationship that one has with the world" is basically another way of saying this, is it not?

Of course definitions and meanings are prescriptive; indeed, I could be explaining string theory right now, though you're not going to interpret the symbols correctly. ;) But the Greeks, who invented the word, used it in the sense I defined, and I think it ought to retain that special definition primarily because there is no English equivalent. Eudaimonia usually translates into "happiness" or "well-being" and, less frequently, "flourishing." The first two translations have similar problems. For the last, eudaimonia, most virtue ethicists would argue, can only be achieved by humans, but plants and animals can be said to be "flourishing."

I don't think a state of relationship can be equated with a state of mind. One can be said to be in a "happy" or pleasurable or euphoric, as you use, state of mind without having a healthy relationship with the world. Take a drug addict who just got his fix, for example. Or even a man in a coma fantasy. That said, one might say "well, since one might be in said coma fantasy, knowing if one has eudaimonia is impossible." That's true; but even so, one can know who doesn't have it and what things don't procure it, and from that one can eschew these things to at least be certain that one might have it.

State of mind could encompass what you "know" about your relationship with the world, I give you that. But then we're left equivocating. You seem to say that eudaimonia is possibly a dopamine dream. For one, dopamine doesn't give you knowledge about your relationship with the world. Second, you contest eudaimonia is a type of dream, thus not anything real. Forgoing the second, perhaps your knowledge of the relationship gives you a dopamine rush and this is why you should cultivate a healthy relationship; but that's giving priority to the dopamine rush (i.e. saying that it's what we should ultimately be out to achieve) whereas, if one is said to seek eudaimonia, they give the relationship the priority regardless.

Perhaps the best reason for the distinction is that whereas now we call a moment "happy" or "euphoric" we cannot say a moment has eudaimonia or is eudaimon. Only lives can be qualified as such. Thus, one can have eudaimonia without necessarily feeling good. This is why I think it's better explained as a relationship one has with the world than a particular state of mind.

This idea of assessing your "state of relationship" with the world is quite neglected in many cultures. The conception of "happiness" is one of a subjective nature, which is a very partial conception at that. And, indeed, defining eudaimonia as this subjective "happiness" is typical, albeit erroneous as to its originally intended meaning.

In another post I read that you were working on a philosophy degree; normally I wouldn't exhaust the subject like this, but I thought you might appreciate the extra info :)

[blank|verse]

This one definitely deserves to be heard, Sampson, there are plenty of internal rhymes in the first stanza particularly, which means it reads very rhythmically, like slam or performance poetry. (And I think the philosophy student nature of the content would go down well at a slam!)

The second stanza works well, I liked the short line 'life is' which, being left blank, invites the reader to complete it. This then pushes extra stress onto other occurances of the word 'is', often accentuated by line breaks, which is very unusual, but works well and causes the reader to question definitions, perhaps their own and those universally accepted, which is what the poem is all about in a sense, so I thought that worked very well.

Good stuff.