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Journal of Philosophy of Life Vol.4, No.1 (January 2014):28- [Essay]
Does Happiness Die With Us?
An Aristotelian Examination of the Fortunes of the Deceased
Edward C. DuBois *
Abstract In the Nicomachean Ethics , Aristotle tackles a very interesting issue when he inquires about the words of the wise man Solon. Solon suggests that we count no man happy until he is dead, that we must ‘look to the end’ before we judge. In this paper, I examine how Aristotle interprets Solon in two different ways, and how he responds to these interpretations. I contend that they result in something of a ‘Solonian Circle’ that is hard to escape. I then examine the work of Paul Gooch and Kurt Pritzl, who discuss how Aristotle breaks out of the Solonian Circle and how he ultimately harmonizes these interpretations with his own account of happiness. Finally, I argue that the issue of happiness after death is largely irrelevant to the project of virtue ethics and human flourishing, though how we think about the happiness or unhappiness of the dead plays a major role in our moral lives and thinking.
1. Introduction
If we can believe the ancient reports, the Greek sage Solon remarked that we ought to count nobody happy until he has died. Solon does not suggest that death itself is a happy occasion, or somehow brings happiness to the deceased. Instead, what Solon means is that the adjective ‘happy’ is not something to be bestowed while one still draws breath; too many unpredictable and unfavorable circumstances may intervene to diminish our happiness while we are alive. Rather, it is only after the possibility of such circumstances is precluded that we might be called happy – once we are, in Aristotle’s words, “beyond the reach of evils and misfortunes.” 1 Further, the consensus is – at least in Aristotle’s day – that the issue goes deeper than the grave. The received opinion, discussed in the Nicomachean Ethics I.10-11, is that the happiness of the deceased may be affected by the behavior of their descendants. A person’s reputation may be enhanced by successful and honorable children, while profligates and
- (^) Graduate Student, Part-Time Lecturer, Dept. of Philosophy, University at Albany (SUNY), 1400 Washington Ave, HU 257, Albany NY 12203 USA. 1 Aristotle (1889), p. 23.
dishonorable progeny may easily tarnish the family name. As Kurt Pritzl points out, acquiring honor and avoiding dishonor in Greek society was a social business: “of necessity one must rely on one’s family and friends to do so.”^2 This idea about honor and happiness is seen to apply equally well to the living and the dead, since the Greek tradition holds that the dead are “inactive but conscious, and conscious especially of the fortunes of their descendants.” 3 Yet, Aristotle treats this account with circumspection because his own account of virtue identifies happiness with an active life of noble and virtuous deeds (emphasis on the word life ). This would preclude the dead, necessarily, from taking part in the kind of happiness that Aristotle sketches in the Ethics. This apparent tension has been examined by many, though an accurate explanation of how Aristotle resolves the tension (and what his own view really is) has been lacking in the literature. As such, this conflict sets up the background to this paper.
2. The Aim of this Paper
In this work, I examine the apparent discord between the common account of happiness after death and Aristotle’s own conception of happiness as activity. Part of this analysis includes original research into the origins of this common account itself. Then, I argue that authors Paul Gooch and Kurt Pritzl are able to provide helpful insight into what Aristotle means to say about happiness after death. In light of this explication, I discuss why exactly Aristotle’s position is important to our moral thinking, and that there is a deeper meaning to be gleaned from his work in the Ethics I.10-11.
3. The ‘Common View’ of Death and Happiness?
In ancient Greek tradition, Hermes is the ‘messenger of the gods.’ Not only does Hermes deliver messages between the Olympian gods themselves, but he also ferries warnings, demands, and tidings between the various realms of men and gods. Moreover, one of his titles in Greek is psychopompos , literally translating to ‘leader of souls’. It is Hermes’ task, then, to guide the newly deceased to the appropriate venue of the afterlife. The Greeks – most Greeks,
(^2) Pritzl (1983), p. 107. (^3) Pritzl (1983), p. 107.
judgment-based system in the afterlife which at least makes room for a soul to be happy in some respect or other. For instance, Hesiod’s Works and Days sets out the idea of the “Isles of the Blest” for certain mythical warriors, and mystery cults (the Eleusinian and Orphic, e.g.) seem to hold that practitioners will be ‘prosperous’ after they die for having been initiated into esoteric knowledge.^9 These exist not as rewards for conduct, but for other qualities and actions. However, among the philosophically inclined, the belief of the soul’s potential reincarnation may provide a basis for a system of ethical judgment in the afterlife which bears on the soul’s ensuing prosperity and the potential for happiness; Garland discusses the reincarnation ‘merit ladder’ developed by Empedocles as well as other examples (including some from the poet Pindar) of merit-based judgment in the afterlife, though the most famous that comes to mind is the system developed in Platonic philosophy such as the dialogues Meno and Phaedo as well as the Republic.^10 What is clear, then, is that what emerges as the ‘common’ account of the afterlife is anything but common or homogeneous, especially by the time of Aristotle. Depending on who you ask, you might get at least two – and possibly more – conflicting accounts. This makes sense from a social and ethnological perspective, as the Greek belief system was an alloy of native Hellenic myths combined with the beliefs of the cultures with whom the Greek city-states fought and traded. This, and the popularity of mystery cults like those mentioned above. While almost all Greek cities agreed on the supremacy of the Olympic gods and goddesses, and major themes and stories involving these deities, an equally congealed understanding of death, dying, and the afterlife did not seem to arise until much, much later in the culture’s history. So – where does this acknowledgment leave us in the broader context of Aristotle’s discussion of happiness and death in the Ethics I.10-11? In actuality, it seems that Aristotle manages to avoid pinpointing what account he is dealing with. He does not speak at length of a certain tradition or eschatological commitment, but instead treats with the prevailing (general) opinion that the dead have some notion of what is going on with their friends and families, and that they have at least a minimal capacity for happiness and sorrow in their current state. Perhaps this is something he calls the common opinion because it is the core assumption of the majority of edified religious
(^9) Garland (2001), p. 61. (^10) Cf. Garland (2001), p. 63.
views at the time (suggested by the prevalence of the mystery cults during Plato’s and even Aristotle’s lifetime). Or, perhaps this assumption about the dead is common because it is what most individuals tend to believe about the afterlife, in conscious or unconscious defiance of the ‘gloomy’ precedent of Homer. Regardless of this question, though, we see Aristotle adopt a starting point for his argument in the Ethics I.10-11 which at least has some history in Greek religious and mythological thought, and thus may defensibly be seen as the common view of death and happiness.
4. Bypassing the Solonian Circle
We have established Aristotle’s starting point about death and happiness. Now, we must use that view to interpret what Solon the Wise means when he tells us to ‘look to the end’ in order to determine someone’s happiness. Following Pritzl as well as Gooch, Aristotle identifies two ways to interpret the idea of looking to a person’s end to evaluate happiness. 11 These are as follows: (i) Solon could mean that a person, being dead, is therefore happy. Gooch calls this the ‘literal’ interpretation of Solon’s famous dictum, and it would seem to make death the necessary and sufficient condition for happiness. Yet, there are problems with this. First, Gooch as well as Pritzl note Aristotle’s objection based on his own understanding of happiness as requiring activity of some kind. Aristotle’s own account suggests that happiness is to be found in a life of virtuous action (among the political living, whom we can help and befriend).^12 Aristotle dismisses the literal reading by saying that it seems “absurd” to those who (like him) “assert happiness to be a kind of energy [activity].” Since activity (and presumably whatever consciousness a person has) is terminated at the point of death, this interpretation cannot be correct. 13 (ii) The remaining interpretation of Solon is that we cannot reasonably claim a person to be happy or unhappy until he is dead, since only then is he beyond the effects of life’s ups and downs [good and evil]. His state of happiness, whatever it is, becomes stable after he passes. 14 Yet, even this interpretation has its problems. Aristotle acknowledges that if it is true that good and evil can
(^11) cf. Pritzl (1983), p. 104; Gooch (1983), p. 114. (^12) cf. Pritzl (1983), pp. 104-105; Gooch (1983), p. 114. (^13) Aristotle (1889), p. 23. What Browne has translated as ‘energy’ here is more properly translated as ‘activity’. The term in question is 14 energeia , with the root ergon (work, toil, activity, deed). cf. Aristotle (1889), p. 23; Gooch (1983), p. 114.
diminished from what it could be on earth.^17 All of this feels like we have gone around chasing our tails; as Gooch states, “Aristotle has [now] come full circle in his consideration of alternative interpretations of Solon’s saying.”^18 He has exhausted his options, and either must bite the bullet on one interpretation, or else suggest a resolution. In fact, Aristotle does see a way out of what I refer to as the Solonian Circle. He finds a way to reconcile his own account of happiness with commonly received ideas about the afterlife in order to produce a harmony between the two. Aristotle argues that virtue (virtuous activity of the soul) is what produces happiness in a living being: it is self-sufficient, and in Pritzl’s words, “decisive for establishing the happiness of the individual.” Fortune (good and bad) cannot replace or overturn virtuous happiness, but rather it may enhance one’s happiness or else test one’s virtue and forbearance.^19 Aristotle applies this claim to the dead as well: they may be happy or unhappy in Hades’ house, and the effects of the living may impact them there, however slightly. It should be noted that Aristotle evinces skepticism that there is an afterlife, let alone one where the dead have any degree of consciousness, but he leaves the possibility open because he wishes to avoid being ‘too unfriendly’ to others and it would contradict accepted sentiments (which he takes to be at least partially correct until undeniably proven wrong). 20 Pritzl argues that these should not be conflated into one large reason; rather, Aristotle wishes to emphasize the role Greek friendship plays in supporting social life (it cannot be severed completely by death) separately from a desire to not offend the public on such a sensitive topic. 21 In the end, what is most important is how one understands Aristotle’s motivations in his treatment of the topic in the Ethics I.10-11. The assessment by Kurt Pritzl stands as testimony to a philosopher whose overarching focus was the philosophy of human life. Pritzl remarks that Aristotle simultaneously wants to root happiness in the stability of human virtue, but he needs to avoid the strict Platonism which denies any importance to friends and family when it comes to living a good and happy life. Aristotle recognizes that external goods do bear on our happiness – definitely in life, and maybe even in death – but that a life of
(^17) Aristotle (1889), p. 24. (^18) Gooch (1983), p. 114. (^19) Pritzl (1983), p. 108. (^20) Pritzl (1983), pp. 108-109. (^21) Pritzl (1983), p. 109.
noble action is decisive in determining whether or not a life might be a happy one.^22 Now, though, the focus shifts from what Aristotle says to how we ought to consider it as contemporary philosophers who are also concerned with the philosophy of life. In the remainder of this paper, I seek answers to the following questions: Is Aristotle right as-is, or must his account be amended? What overall lessons about life, death, and happiness can we take away from the analysis of the Ethics I.10-11?
5. Conclusion: Does Happiness Die With Us?
I shall argue that it does. There are three possible outcomes, and each of them leads to the same conclusion (that happiness as we understand it is rendered moot). First, if we lose all awareness after death, then we cannot perceive any happiness that we had right up to the moment of death. Second, if our awareness diminishes or changes, then the experience of pleasure and pain must also be changed, so the analogue falls apart. We would not be talking about the same kind of happiness anymore. And, lastly, if we die but keep our awareness ‘as it is’, then we lose tangible and meaningful contact with friends, family, and others. We can no longer act virtuously – the decisive factor in a life’s happiness – or interact as we once did in the mortal realm. If this is precluded, it seems that some measure of virtue’s happiness disappears as well. Remember that virtue for Aristotelians is rooted in facts about human life, not human afterlife – when one dies, there is presumably no more need for the kinds of behaviors that make life upon the Earth more pleasant and useful. Further, the kind of happiness that Aristotle builds his account of virtue around ceases to be important. In the absence of a conclusive picture of the afterlife, we have no reason to require happiness-for-man be equivalent to happiness-for-corpse. Furthermore, consider what Aristotle is really saying when he proposes his conciliatory solution to escape the Solonian Circle. I agree with Paul Gooch when he remarks that Aristotle’s aim in this section of the Nicomachean Ethics is only to show that the common opinions of the afterlife are ‘irrelevant’ when it comes to his account of happiness. You can believe them or not, but the importance of virtuous activity for happiness in this life is not
(^22) cf. Pritzl (1983), pp. 109-110.
experience while we are alive; but, I do not doubt that (e.g.) my thought of ‘What would my grandparents think of me?’ is one of the most morally potent that I could ever have. 24
References
Aristotle (1889). The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle. R.W. Browne (trans.), George Bell & Sons. Garland, Robert (2001). The Greek Way of Death. Cornell University Press. Gooch, Paul W. (1983). “Aristotle and the Happy Dead.” Classical Philology , 78(2): 112-116. Homer (1879). The Odyssey. G.A. Schomberg (trans.), John Murray. Pritzl, Kurt (1983). “Arisotle and Happiness After Death: Nicomachean Ethics 1.10-11.” Classical Philology , 78(2): 101-111.
(^24) An in-depth analysis of why Aristotelians might consistently appeal to thoughts of obligations to the deceased would make for a much-needed study in the field of contemporary virtue ethics. However, it is not my goal here to offer up such an account. Instead, I only want to point out a driving force behind at least some of our moral thinking.
