EUDEMONISM. — From the Greek εὐ-θαυσινός (εὐθαί-
μοιν, good genius, and hence “happy”), in the generic sense, it is every moral system that places in happiness, individual or social, the end and very essence of morality. If happiness is understood as pure individual empirical pleasure, e. hedonism (v.); if, on the other hand, happiness is identified with private or public interest, e. utilitarianism (v.); which is itself manifold, according to the various conceptions of utility itself. E. properly so called is found when happiness is understood in a rational sense.
Alongside pure hedonism, professed by the Cyrenaic school, e. may be said to constitute the fundamental system of Greek ethics. With a utilitarian background among the Sophists, it rises to a purer conception in Socrates, who places true happiness not in material goods that make life comfortable, but in virtue. Yet Socrates does not attain a rigorous objective foundation of the moral good and of virtue itself, which is reduced to knowledge of the good. To remedy this Socratic indeterminacy in the concept of virtue, in which happiness is resolved without remainder, Aristippus attempted to do so, though arriving at serious deviations, by making virtue consist in the wise pursuit of pleasure; Cynics (v.) placed it in the greatest possible independence from external necessities and needs. Aristotle, while maintaining the fundamental eudemonistic principle (cf. Eth. Nicom., I, 4 ff.), nevertheless set the ethical problem on the path toward its true solution by making happiness essentially consist in the perfect development of man’s specific activity, that is, of his rational activity. Virtue was consequently conceived by Aristotle as the inclination and habitual disposition through which man acts rationally, according to his nature, that is, determinately insofar as he is man (Eth. Nic., X, 8,9). In modern philosophy e. is substantially followed, in different forms, by Descartes, Locke, Wolff, Cumberland, and subsequently by the various utilitarian tendencies (Spencer, Pafendorf, Stuart Mill). A form of negative e. may be considered Schopenhauer’s pessimism, which seeks true happiness in radical renunciation of life and its developments. An irreducible opponent of every form of e. is Kant, who sees in every end extrinsic to duty and the law the very negation of morality (cf. Critica della ragion pratica, I, I, cap. 1, Italian trans. by F. Capra, Bari 1942, pp. 21-68).
E., insofar as it places in enjoyment or happiness, however conceived, the ultimate reason and formal element of the morality of human action, falls into the same fundamental error as hedonism, confusing what in morality is merely a concomitant and consequent element with its essential constitution. Psychologically, it is true that in every action man seeks happiness, but the objective ethical end to which human activity is connected is first and foremost the realization of the moral good, according to the determinations essentially connected with rational nature, in relation to the attainment of its ultimate end. That this ultimate end coincides with man’s perfect happiness, to be attained in a life to come—whose denial, or at least ignorance, constitutes another substantial defect of the ethical systems considered above—is also a fact that could authorize a form of correct e.; but it always remains true that the objective foundation of moral value is not the formal reason of happiness, but rather the unconditional demand entailed by the ethical-metaphysical categories of “order,” “necessity,” “law,” and “obligation.” This, on the other hand, does not lead back to the Kantian position: it is in fact possible to act with the attainment of happiness in view, whether absolute or relative, and nevertheless preserve in one’s action the fundamental character of morality, when it is undertaken first and foremost in conformity with the objective order of duty and the good, to which the end of happiness remains subordinate and conditioned.