Eudaimonia: Defining "Flourishing"

What occurred to be a mere comparison led me to revisit my experience in Vietnam as one of the most memorable moments in my life. During my stay at Sa Pa, a ward within the Lào Cai province, I had an opportunity to communicate with members of local tribes from the Hmong and Giáy (Zai) ethnic groups, resolving my curiosity regarding Vietnamese rural culture. Dressed in handmade cotton shirts and hemp jackets dyed with indigo blue, both tribes were living a life of genuine satisfaction and pleasure. Although they were painfully cut off from discussions of how Vietnam was being governed or which public events and concerts were to take place, they were enjoying a leisurely, contented lifestyle amidst the cool breeze in the beautiful, endless fields of corn and rice.

Later, back in the busy streets of central Sa Pa, I could not stop reminiscing about the happiness that overflowed throughout the village of the two tribes. That was until I confronted a little girl around the age of 2, sitting on the side of the street begging for money from the multitude of strangers that passed by. In addition to that, there were two boys, one with a paralysed leg and the other carrying an infant on his back. I simply could not ignore the little girl. In the streets, I sat down in front of her and wrote a little letter in Vietnamese. Given that the girl may not have learned to read, I took out a small rubber Jesus figurine from my pocket and gave it to her as a symbol of love and hope. She stared at me for a while, I stared back and tried to smile. It was then when her gaze began to tremble and I noticed that a man was watching her from far away, smoking his cigarette. That was when I realised that I had stayed there for too long. I had to leave her in the cold no matter how guilty it would make me feel. Rapidly taking my leave, I looked back at the girl from far away. I was shocked to find the boy with the infant snatching my letter out of the girl's hands, reading it intensely. They were street children, referred to as the "Trẻ Em Lang Thang" in Vietnam. Under traffickers or other exploitative adults, the children would collect money for survival. Failure to accumulate a sufficient amount of money would lead to the children being beaten or, even, killed.

The argument that wealth does not guarantee a happy life is often supported by common tales such as the story of the town mouse and the country mouse. Individuals with higher social or economic position are living a stressful life of public exposure, continually taking risks and fully indulging themselves into the flow of the constantly changing world. Meanwhile, individuals with relatively lesser wealth or social position are often described as more content and relaxed in their living. However, on my journey, I was able to view two completely different lifestyles not of the town mouse and the country mouse, but of the country mouse and the country mouse. Reflecting on my experience in Vietnam, I began to reexamine the use of simple allusions as shorthand for such complex matters.

In his famous work, Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle states that Eudaimonia, the flourishing of life, is naturally sought by all humans never as a means but as an end. Aristotle also mentions that a Eudaimon life, consisting of rational virtuous actions, is better achieved with the support of external factors that are outside our control, albeit as mere instruments to success and to act both rationally and virtuously. These external factors are the givens of life that one has to live with once they are born. However, Nigel Warburton, a distinguished British philosopher and author at Oxford University, presents criticisms of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, denouncing its severe elitism in a way that it does not found its basis on the presumption that the highest state of life can be achieved by willpower alone. Therefore, that Eudaimonia is not available to all.

The scholarly discussions on the matter of whether Eudaimonia can or cannot be achieved by those who are without the favour of external factors form unavoidable arguments against Aristotle’s theories. Yet, I wanted to question the relevance of the external factors of life to human flourishing. The givens of life are not what determines how well one could accomplish Eudaimonia.

Although it is difficult to assess what form a flourishing life would take in reality, Aristotle boldly takes the risk of defining such an abstract ideal. Aristotle describes the endpoint of a chain of values we seek in life. Eudaimonia, being a value that one seeks purely for the merit of the value itself, suits this endpoint. We seek certain values such as wealth, popularity, and power (that can be, for some, the givens of life) in order to primarily fulfil our desire for our lives to go well. However, we do not want our lives to go well because we want to bring about some other end but purely because we seek that value for itself. This value is, as Aristotle describes, Eudaimonia and the human nature of thriving to achieve it.

The claims of some scholars, like Warburton, state that theories must leave a possibility that people can pursue the highest human state of flourishing without the givens of life being positive or particularly beneficial. Nevertheless, this argument also founds itself on the basis that the Aristotelian criteria of defining Eudaimonia in the fundamental sense is eligible for defining human flourishing.

The standard here of judging whether one has fulfilled a Eudaimon life is incorrect. Aristotle’s theory is self contradictory in a sense that values such as wealth, power, or prosperity as a given or as an achievement in life are merely instrumental however are included in the criteria of judging a Eudaimon life. It is not true that one has to attain wealth, power, or any value of the sort in order to achieve a flourishing life. No, one can be lacking of those values yet live a rational and virtuous life of morally righteous pleasure. The flourishing of life is not a prescriptive designed to set up a manual for how people should live. Perhaps, that may be the reason why Aristotle failed to provide modern readers with practical methods to the means of achieving a Eudaimon ethical life, an essence classified as a part of practical philosophy. The flourishing in life is defined by the individual living their life. This does not mean that one can choose to become a seducer on the behalf of their belief that enjoying sexual activity is the flourishing of life. It means, limited by the borders of virtue, one can find and pursue their own means of achieving the flourishing of life that they define, which also appreciates the Greek understanding of ethics.

My approach to the little girl on the streets began with what I thought as kindness. It was after making my unprecedented decision that I realised I could have become more than just a bystander. That I might have taken part in the exploitation of these children through what I thought as help. After closing the chapter of my second trip to Vietnam, I continue to reflect on what a happy life could mean, and whether it can be achieved by those that are without, not the values of wealth and power, but the values of passion and hope. The question continues to resonate in my head today.