Eudaimonia

The Greek word eudaimonia (εὐδαιμονία) is composed of eu, meaning “well,” and daimōn, the genius or inner spirit. Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire translates it here as closely as possible: “to have a good genius.” Stoic happiness, then, is not a state one attains but the health of a faculty: an inner genius in good order, or in other words, right reason. “Happiness is to have a good genius; it is to do good”—the definition fits in a single line and immediately refers back to action.

This happiness is not received from without. Marcus Aurelius seeks it and finds it “neither in study, nor in wealth, nor in glory, nor in pleasure, nor in any other place,” except “in doing what the nature of man requires.” Eudaimonia thus coincides with life according to nature: it is not a goal pursued alongside right action but that very action carried out with constancy. It is the work of the hēgemonikon, the guiding part, when it judges justly and acts accordingly.

From this comes its invulnerability. No misfortune can diminish man’s nature so long as he remains “just, magnanimous, wise”; the adversity that befalls “is no adversity at all,” and even “becomes true happiness, if I bear it with noble courage.” The good genius depends on nothing external because it is the rectitude within.

To be distinguished from pleasure (hēdonē): the latter is a fleeting sensation that slides into pain as soon as it exceeds measure; eudaimonia is a stable state of the soul, independent of feeling. And to be distinguished from luck or good fortune: the French word bonheur carries both meanings, but eudaimonia owes nothing to chance—it arises from right action, whereas fortune merely dispenses circumstances. Inner good genius ≠ external good fortune.