Lorenz Moises Festin

How essential then is friendship in happiness? What role does it play in the experience and realization of human ultimate good? And in what way can friendship help us understand and spell out the nature of happiness? These are some of the questions that I would like to address in this paper. In view of this, I have divided my paper in three parts. In the first, I argue why it is essential to view eudaimonia as actualization. In the second, I take into account the nature of friendship, pointing out the evident parallelism between happiness and friendship. And in the third part, I explain how friendship, insofar as it is paradigmatic of eudaimonia, can clarify the Aristotelian notion of happiness.

While the efficacy of science has lent credence to atheistic attitude, much of humanity has remained tied to its religious legacy. In this paper then, I wish to account for this paradox of belief and unbelief, of religion and irreligion, of theism and atheism in the face of what seems to be the irrepressible success of scientific explorations, driven and powered by a mathematical and mechanistic mental framework. For this purpose, I shall be putting forward the ideas of French philosopher René Le Senne, whose estimation of religion and belief seems to well account for such a paradox.

Happiness is essentially an actualization [energeia], whereby a potentiality comes to be realized. Such a process of actualization is then viewed not simply as a means to an end but as instantiating the end itself. In this regard, the exercise of moral virtue may be viewed as forming part of what could be considered happiness. Consequently, a neat differentiation can hardly be made between what constitutes the means and what pertains to the end. As a moral virtue, friendship is an essential element of a happy life. “For without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.” [Nicomachean Ethics, 1155a 5-6] How essential is friendship in happiness? What role does it play in the experience and realization of human ultimate good? And in what way can friendship help us understand the nature of happiness? The paper first argues why it is essential to view eudaimonia as actualization. It then takes into account the nature of friendship, pointing out its parallelism with happiness. And it aims to explain how friendship, insofar as it is paradigmatic of eudaimonia, can clarify the Aristotelian notion of happiness.