Abstract
Socratic Eudaimonism gives us a model that a naturalist concerning ethics can follow in order to establish a natural for human behavior. With this goal state established, the notion of value for a human being falls out of the relationship between that goal state and the natural world. Socrates thought that the maximal state of flourishing that a human being can achieve could be understood with respect to this natural goal state, and that the actualization of this natural goal is the only standard needed or possible for the evaluation of everything other than it with respect to goodness, badness, rightness or wrongness. Eudaimonia for Socrates is the natural and inevitable goal of all human activity and thus, the good for all human beings. The importance of Socratic eudaimonism for contemporary moral philosophy is that it allows for the naturalization of the notions of good and bad and right and wrong and the elimination of any notion of value—hence, any notion of morality—that cannot be naturalized. To have a notion of morality that cannot be naturalized is to have to explain why something is good or bad or right or wrong without recourse to some brute fact about human nature, human psychology and the way that they interface with the way that the world happens to be. There are at least two reasons to resist a defense of value in the absence of naturalism. First, it makes it impossible to avoid the conclusion that right and wrong are, at some level, arbitrary, as Socrates demonstrates in the Euthyphro . Second, it makes it impossible to give a satisfying explanation for why human beings are motivated to do what is right, and so, impossible to cultivate the desire to be moral in a person who doesn't already have it. I will address these two claims in more detail in a moment.
Highlights
Socratic Eudaimonism gives us a model that a naturalist concerning ethics can follow in order to establish a natural "goal state" for human behavior
When I say that Socratic Eudaimonism provides for the naturalization of value, I do not mean to imply that either the historic Socrates or the Socrates that Plato portrays in his dialogues believed in only what we today call the "natural" world," or that he was a naturalist when it comes to ethics
Socrates sees human behavior as governed by a natural, self-regulating, system of checks and balances that, in the knowledgeable person, will allow that person to come as close as possible to the achievement of the natural goal of eudaimonia as her external circumstances will permit. This eudaimonia is not a peak experience that occurs at the end of her life, it is something that shapes each moment of her experience so that the cumulative effect is that she has lived as much of her life as possible as close to eudaimonia as possible
Summary
Socratic Eudaimonism gives us a model that a naturalist concerning ethics can follow in order to establish a natural "goal state" for human behavior. My claim is that Socrates gives us a model that a naturalist concerning ethics can follow in order to establish a natural "goal state" for human behavior and to show how, once such a goal state is established, the notion of value for a human being can fall out of the relationship between that goal state, and the natural world. I will thread these six theses together briefly before moving on to show how Socrates advances and integrates them in more detail: Socrates sees eudaimonia as an objective state that every human being inevitably, by nature, strives to attain; all people desire and seek their own good and eudaimonia is human good This inevitable striving for an objective eudaimonia is paired by Socrates with a notion of human psychology that understands knowledge to be the determining factor in how successful one is at reaching that objective eudaimonic state. Understanding what is beneficial to oneself includes the realization that harming others is a poor strategy for achieving long-term benefit
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