If you're not a philosopher, you don't know whether you're happy or not
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Obviously, in some sense we are all philosophers. We are all able - to a certain extent - to explain what we mean by the key concepts we use and we are all able to justify that use to some extent. But the depth of our reflection varies wildly - and the socratic position is that the less we have thought about happiness, the less we know whether we are happy or not.
“Socrates also believes that questions concerning whether any particular individual is happy are best answered by someone who is an expert on the subject of happiness. He does not think that, as the subjects of our own happiness, we are in a special position with respect to our awareness of it. The fact that someone believes that she is happy does not necessarily constitute evidence for her happiness, as far as Socrates is concerned. Socrates thinks that we establish the fact that a person is happy through the same sort of evidential criteria that we would use to justify our belief that she is intoxicated, or a victim of cancer. As a result, while the expert on happiness might recognize her own happiness through either introspection or from external criteria, the one who is not an expert on happiness might have to defer to the opinion of an expert, in order to figure out what her own status with respect to happiness is. The dialogues are full of examples of people who take themselves to be happy, while Socrates surreptitiously gets the reader to agree that they are not: the politicians in the Apology, Polus and the Great King in the Gorgias, the possessors of the ring of Gyges in Republic Ⅰ. Thus, while what enables a person to be happy might differ from person to person, for Socrates, happiness is an objective goal toward which human beings inevitably strive.”
If you're not a philosopher, you don't know whether you're happy or not
If you're not a philosopher, you don't know whether you're happy or not
If you're not a philosopher, you don't know whether you're happy or not
Obviously, in some sense we are all philosophers. We are all able - to a certain extent - to explain what we mean by the key concepts we use and we are all able to justify that use to some extent. But the depth of our reflection varies wildly - and the socratic position is that the less we have thought about happiness, the less we know whether we are happy or not.
“Socrates also believes that questions concerning whether any particular individual is happy are best answered by someone who is an expert on the subject of happiness. He does not think that, as the subjects of our own happiness, we are in a special position with respect to our awareness of it. The fact that someone believes that she is happy does not necessarily constitute evidence for her happiness, as far as Socrates is concerned. Socrates thinks that we establish the fact that a person is happy through the same sort of evidential criteria that we would use to justify our belief that she is intoxicated, or a victim of cancer. As a result, while the expert on happiness might recognize her own happiness through either introspection or from external criteria, the one who is not an expert on happiness might have to defer to the opinion of an expert, in order to figure out what her own status with respect to happiness is. The dialogues are full of examples of people who take themselves to be happy, while Socrates surreptitiously gets the reader to agree that they are not: the politicians in the Apology, Polus and the Great King in the Gorgias, the possessors of the ring of Gyges in Republic Ⅰ. Thus, while what enables a person to be happy might differ from person to person, for Socrates, happiness is an objective goal toward which human beings inevitably strive.”
- Naomi Reshotko, Socratic Virtue. Making the Best of the Neither-Good-Nor-Bad, p. 171