“We need not hesitate to translate the word eudaimonia by the English ‘happiness’ (my transliteration).” So Burnet wrote in 1900, but the hardening consensus is that he is wrong. The differences between the two notions, it is now commonly supposed, are too many and too deep to think that “happiness,” the long established conventional translation, will seriously mislead us in understanding the nature of the Aristotelian eudaimonia. The arguments supporting this popular view are usually stated briefly in notes or by the way. They would benefit from a more extended airing than they have had so far. The results of this examination, I believe, will leave the tradition looking stronger than it has recently seemed.
