‘Who Needs Virtue? The Early Academy and the Way to Happiness’ (WNV) aims to show that the theories developed in the Early Academy - the phase of the Academy immediately following the death of Plato - are crucial for understanding the dynamics and interplay of the origin of the debate on virtue and happiness in the 4th century BCE.
How do we human beings attain happiness? And to what extent, if any, does virtue contribute to happiness? These questions lie at the heart of Western ethics from as early as the 5th century BCE. In antiquity, there were two major, competing answers to the question of how happiness and virtue are related. The first model, advanced by Plato, suggests that virtue (arete) is a sufficient condition for human beings to secure happiness (eudaimonia). Differently, Aristotle holds that virtue is not sufficient for someone to live a happy life, for other (non-moral) goods (e.g., health, wealth and friends) are also required. These two models are usually examined in terms of their similarities and differences. Yet, what is missing from the picture is an account of the framework in which this debate originally emerged and the discussions that contributed to shaping these responses. WNV seeks to fill this gap by advancing the hypothesis that coeval developments in ancient virtue ethics can be more effectively understood as the result of a dialectic with and in the backdrop of the discussions of virtue and happiness conducted by the first generation of Plato’s students.