Felicità, Eudaimonia, Compimento umano

The terms eudaimonia, happiness and human fulfillment have different meanings, which designate entities which, by some authors, are connected. The paper summarizes the main conceptions made in this regard in the history of moral philosophy, for example those of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas (with a focus), Hobbes, Spinoza, Bentham, Mill and utilitarianism, Rousseau, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche. In a certain sense, eudaimonia and happiness designate good fortune in the possession and enjoyment of the goods. Or, in a subjective sense, they designate an inner psychological condition of great satisfaction, of joy, of total (or almost total) exultation in the satisfaction of human inclinations, desires, tendencies. Again, the eudaimonia can designate in an ontological and/or ethical sense – as happens also in a further sense to the term happiness – the human fulfillment, the success of life and of the human being, the realization of human potentialities, the human flourishing, etc., achieved especially through the excellent-virtuous exercise of one/some activity/activities (understood only as means and/or also as end/ends) and/or for a divine gift, or with human strength alone.