Eudaimonia: What Aristotle Meant by a Happy Life, and How to Live It Today

In my book I ask a question that still fascinates me: do the things that make us happy today match what made people happy 200 years ago, or before Christ? My parents' generation was delighted by walnuts on the Christmas tree. We have washing machines, cars and phones, so logically we should be far happier. And yet, as I wrote in the book, it isn't so.

That kind of question would not have surprised Aristotle. As I remind readers, for him philosophy began with a question, with human curiosity about everything and the attempt to make sense of life. More than 2,300 years ago he asked what a good human life really is, and his answer had a name: eudaimonia.

In my book Courage on the Journey of Happiness, questions like this are where every change begins. For the practical, everyday map, start with how to be happy. Here we go one layer deeper.

What is eudaimonia? Meaning and definition

The word joins the Greek eu, well, and daimon, divinity or spirit, although Aristotle himself made little of that origin¹. It is usually translated as happiness, but often also as flourishing or well-being, because in English happiness sounds like a feeling, and eudaimonia isn't one.

A simple definition: eudaimonia is living well and doing well across a whole life, by using and developing the best in you. It asks not how you feel this afternoon, but whether your life is a good one, and truly yours.

What did Aristotle mean by eudaimonia?

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle starts from something we all recognise. Almost everyone, he says, calls the highest good happiness and treats “living well” and “doing well” as being happy. The trouble starts with what it consists of: pleasure, wealth or honour, and the same person calls it health when ill and wealth when poor². His own answer has four surprisingly modern parts:

• It is the one thing we want for its own sake. We want pleasure, recognition and money at least partly because we hope they will make us happy; nobody wants happiness for the sake of something else.
• It is an activity, not a mood. Happiness, for Aristotle, is virtuous activity: doing what humans do, and doing it well¹.
• It takes a whole life. In D. P. Chase's 19th-century translation, “it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring”, and one good day doesn't make a happy life.
• It needs some outside support. Without friends, money and some influence, he says, it is impossible, or at least not easy, to do noble things.

Notice what is missing from that list: a feeling. That is the heart of the difference.

Hedonic vs eudaimonic happiness: what's the difference?

In happiness vs joy I describe the two traditions of well-being research in brief: the hedonic, about pleasure and avoiding pain, and the eudaimonic, about meaning and self-realisation³. Here is the part that is easy to miss: the difference often lies not in what you do, but why you do it.

Psychologists Veronika Huta and Richard Ryan defined hedonia as seeking pleasure and comfort, and eudaimonia as seeking to use and develop the best in yourself. Different people can have very different motives for the same activity, and some, like playing a musical instrument, can be high in both⁴. A walk can be a rest or a promise kept to yourself. Often it is both.

Happiness is never outside of us

In my book, when I describe a meaningful life, contributing to something bigger than yourself, loving and serving other people and trying to leave the world a little better than you found it, I admit that I found myself in it. It explains why I needed to write the book at all: to motivate people and to pass on what I know.

The other half was harder for me: a good life is built from the inside, from how you use what you have, not from what you collect. As I admit in the book, I had a hard time accepting that, but it doesn't make it any less true.

We should keep in mind that happiness is never outside of us.

This is not an argument against comfort; Aristotle himself wanted friends and enough money in a happy life. It is an argument against expecting outside things to do the inside work. If you long for clearer direction, how to find your purpose in life is a good next step.

What happiness research says about eudaimonic well-being

As an economist who has spent many years studying happiness, I find it remarkable how much of Aristotle has returned to science. In 1989 psychologist Carol Ryff argued that the reigning measures of well-being had little theory behind them and proposed six dimensions: self-acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life and personal growth. In 321 young, middle-aged and older adults, positive relations, autonomy, purpose and growth were not strongly tied to older measures such as life satisfaction⁵. Feeling satisfied and living fully are related, but not the same.

The field has grown fast, and not always tidily. Huta and Alan Waterman showed that researchers define eudaimonia as an orientation (values, motives, goals), a behaviour, an experience or a way of functioning, and that findings based on different definitions can be quite discrepant⁶. So when you read that eudaimonia does this or that, ask which eudaimonia was measured.

The most practical finding, for me, is about time. In an experiment by Huta and Ryan, 114 university students added at least one pleasure-seeking or one eudaimonic activity of their own choice to each day for ten days. The pleasure group felt more positive and carefree straight away. Only the eudaimonic group gained in meaning by the end, and three months later it reported more vitality, more inspiring experiences and fewer negative feelings, though not higher life satisfaction. The authors concluded that combining both pursuits may go with the greatest well-being. One student sample settles nothing, but it echoes Aristotle's swallow: flourishing works on a longer clock.

In my own field, eudaimonia has entered official statistics. Since April 2011 the UK Office for National Statistics has asked people, from 0 to 10, how far the things they do in life feel worthwhile, and calls this its eudemonic question, next to life satisfaction, happiness and anxiety⁷. Aristotle would have liked that.

How to live a eudaimonic life: seven gentle steps

You don't need to move to a Greek island to flourish. Eudaimonia grows from ordinary choices, repeated over seasons. These are the steps I suggest.

1. Ask Aristotle's question about your week. Look at your calendar: what do you do only as a means to something else, and what is worth doing for its own sake? Every week needs some of the second kind.
2. Check the why, not just the what. Before your next free hour, ask whether you want rest and pleasure or growth and meaning. Both are legitimate; knowing which you are choosing changes how you spend it.
3. Use one strength on purpose. Name something you do well and care about, such as listening, teaching or making things beautiful, and use it deliberately once this week.
4. Grow a little beyond your edge. Choose something slightly above your current skill: a language lesson, a difficult conversation, a first draft.
5. Invest in people as well as projects. Aristotle counted friends among the things a good life needs. One honest, unhurried conversation is a eudaimonic act.
6. Make one choice by your own measure. Autonomy means living by what you think is important, not by what others expect. Make one small decision this week by your own values.
7. Judge by seasons, not single days. One swallow doesn't make a spring, and one bad day doesn't make a bad life. Once a month, ask the worthwhile question from 0 to 10, and choose one change.

What are examples of eudaimonia in everyday life?

Eudaimonia rarely looks dramatic. It looks like a woman of 45 learning the piano, badly and gladly. A manager helping a younger colleague find her feet. A neighbour planting olive trees she may never see fully grown. A friend who says the honest thing, kindly.

None of these is pleasant every minute. Learning is clumsy and olive trees grow slowly. But each uses and develops the best in a person, and that is eudaimonic happiness: not a peak of feeling, but a life well used.

Eudaimonia isn't something you achieve once and frame on the wall. You practise it, question by question, and it is easier in good company. That is the work we do together in my programme Permission for Life. Aristotle called it living well and doing well. I call it giving yourself permission.