On the subject of different kinds of happiness, I enjoyed reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. He talked of eudaimonia, ie “good spirit”, “good condition of

On the subject of different kinds of happiness, I enjoyed reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. He talked of eudaimonia, ie “good spirit”, “good condition of the personal daimon.” A sort of “thriving” or doing well. This is, in his language, the human good. But what fascinated me was the brief mention of another good, a good more proper to a god than to mankind, “makarios.” We might translate it “blessed.” In the everyday language of the ancient Greeks, the word could be used in other ways too. One could call the carefree lives of children, or of the rich and beautiful, “blessed” in this sense.