ABSTRACT

Eudaimonism holds that the best life is the life well lived, where a life well lived makes optimal use of one’s capacities. While it is safe to say that all contemporary forms of eudaimonism owe a substantial debt to Aristotle, what marks out a theory of well-being as eudaimonistic has much more to do with its structure, rather than necessarily with its historic roots. In this chapter I will isolate the structure of eudaimonism, explore the variety of ways in which contemporary theorists (both philosophers and psychologists) fill out this structure, and then consider some of the challenges eudaimonism faces.