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Journal of Happiness Studies

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06-10-2023 | Research Paper

Neera Badhwar’s Neo-Aristotelian Well-Being: A Stoic Response

Author: Matthew Carter Cashen

Published in: Journal of Happiness Studies | Issue 8/2023

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Abstract

In her 2014 monograph, philosopher Neera Badhwar develops a neo-Aristotelian account of well-being according to which well-being consists in happiness in an objectively worthwhile life. An objectively worthwhile life is a life that is virtuous, but virtue is not enough for well-being: a person also must find pleasure and purpose in what the ancients called “external goods,” that is, goods “external to the soul” like wealth, health, and friendships. Badhwar argues that these goods contribute to well-being directly, and she rejects the Stoic view that they are valuable only as the instruments and material of virtue. In this paper, I defend the Stoic view she rejects and make the case that if one claims that virtue is primary in well-being, as Neo-Aristotelians like Badhwar do, then one should adopt the Stoic view that well-being consists only in virtuous activity. While Badhwar and others dismiss that view as implausible, I defend its plausibility by arguing that its critics misunderstand it.

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Badhwar uses ‘well-being’ as a contemporary stand-in for eudaimonia, and reserves ‘happiness’ for a positive, long-term psychological state that includes pleasure and a sense of purpose (Well-Being: Happiness in a Worthwhile Life, 6). Here, I’ll refer only to well-being and happiness and leave the Greek eudaimonia to the ancients Badhwar (2014).

Consider Lawrence Becker’s words when describing the difficulty of defending a contemporary Stoicism against philosophers today, for they typically “reject the ideal of the Stoic sage…in the same gesture that dismisses tranquillizers and prefrontal lobotomies as means to a good life” (5) Becker (2017).

Badhwar’s nuanced discussion of Bernard Williams’ “dangerously flourishing villain” (185–188) from Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (p. 43) offers several reasons to doubt the plausibility of a thoroughly vicious individual who nonetheless enjoys life and maintains a sense of self-worth and security. Still, she grants that it is not impossible Williams (1985).

The scholarly debate about the role of external goods in Aristotle’s theory of eudaimonia primarily concerns the question of whether Aristotle thinks that external goods contribute to eudaimonia both indirectly by enabling virtuous activities and directly, independent of their role in virtue, or whether he thinks that they contribute to eudaimonia only by enabling virtuous activities. Badhwar takes Aristotle’s view to be the former, But notably, if the latter is his view, then it’s closer to the Stoic position than Badhwar thinks. The modern interpretative debate was inaugurated with a pair of 1985 articles, John Cooper’s “Aristotle on the Goods of Fortune” and Terrance Irwin’s “Permanent Happiness: Aristotle and Solon.” Timothy Roche’s “Happiness and External Goods” is a superb more recent analysis that sides with Badhwar’s reading of Aristotle Irwin (1985) Roche (2014).

And in her essay, “Individualistic Perfectionism and Human Nature,” she puts it this way: external goods “are the chief sources of that emotional fulfillment called happiness, and happiness is an essential component of flourishing. Virtue is not enough” (4) Badhwar (2017).

The position sketched here is the orthodox interpretation of the orthodox Stoic position on external goods endorsed, for instance, by Apollodorus and Chrysippus (as reported by Diogenes Laertius 7.101-107). It’s a long tradition with many adherents and much disagreement, so I don’t mean to say that this is the exact position of even all ancient Stoics or that all interpreters agree on all the details. In Becker’s New Stoicism, he calls the external goods “good for virtuous activity” even though they are not themselves good because they’re also “good for vicious activity” (146).

Dan Haybron, The Pursuit of Unhappiness: the Elusive Psychology of Well-Being, 161–163. I should note that Haybron’s terminology doesn’t always match Badhwar’s, but Badhwar rightly takes him to be talking about the same things: his question, ‘what is in Angela’s interest?’, mirrors Badhwar’s question about Angela’s well-being, as do his question about Angela’ “perfection” and Badhwar’s about the virtues of an objectively good life. More importantly, while neither Haybron nor Badhwar (at this moment) are discussing external goods explicitly, external goods are the sources of much of the happiness in question, like “good company and food and drink” (161) Haybron (2010).

Among others reasons, Badhwar rejects globalism about virtue because it is psychologically unrealistic: it is “beyond our psychological capacity to meet” (158), she writes, especially given obstacles often presented by people’s “genetic endowment” (161) and “early experiences” (162).

To say that virtue is domain-specific is to say that each of a person’s virtues corresponds to a loosely-demarcated domain of her life (166). Badhwar’s defense of domain-specificity in Well-Being builds on and in some ways reimagines her argument in her 1996 “The Limited Unity of the Virtues” in that, in Well-Being, she modifies her earlier view that domains are neatly demarcated. To be clear, to identify virtues as domain-specific is not to identify them as entirely situational and local as they are in, for example, John Doris’ 2002 Lack of Character Doris (2005).

Consider: “They believe that there is nothing between virtue and vice, while the Peripatetics say that [moral] progress is between virtue and vice. For they say, just as a stick must be either straight or crooked, so a man must be either just or unjust and neither ‘more just’ nor ‘more unjust’; and the same for the other virtues” (Diogenes 7.127) Miller (2018).

Badhwar, N. (1996). The Limited Unity of Virtue. Nous, 30(3), 306–329.CrossRef

Badhwar, N. (2014). Well-Being: Happiness in a worthwhile life. Oxford University Press.

Badhwar, N. (2017). Individualistic perfection and human nature. Reason Papers, 39(1), 22–34.

Becker, L. (2017). A new stoicism: Revised Edition. Princeton University Press.

Cooper, J. (1985). Aristotle on the Goods of Fortune. Philosophical Review, 94(2), 173–196.CrossRef

Doris, J. (2005). Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior. Cambridge University Press.

Haybron, D. (2010). The pursuit of unhappiness: The elusive psychology of well-being. Oxford University Press.

Irwin, T. H. (1985). Permanent happiness: Aristotle and Solon. Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, volume III (pp. 89–123). Ed. Julia Annas.

Miller, J. (Ed.). (2018). Diogenes Laertius: Lives of the Eminent philosophers. Oxford University Press.

Roche, T. D. (2014). Happiness and External Goods. The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (pp. 34–63). Ed. Ronald Polansky. Cambridge.

Williams, B. (1985). Ethics and the limits of philosophy. Harvard University Press.

Title: Neera Badhwar’s Neo-Aristotelian Well-Being: A Stoic Response
Author: Matthew Carter Cashen
Publication date: 06-10-2023
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Published in: Journal of Happiness Studies / Issue 8/2023
Print ISSN: 1389-4978
Electronic ISSN: 1573-7780
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-023-00690-y

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