Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The word happiness does not entirely capture the meaning of the Greek word. One important difference is that happiness often connotes being or tending to be in a certain pleasant state of mind. For example, when one says that someone is "a very happy person", one usually means that they seem subjectively contented with the way things are going ...
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Euphrosyne (/ j uː ˈ f r ɒ z ɪ n iː /; Ancient Greek: Εὐφροσύνη, romanized: Euphrosúnē) is a goddess, one of the three Charites, known in ancient Rome as the Gratiae (Graces). She was sometimes called Euthymia (Ancient Greek: Εὐθυμία, lit.
The philosophy of happiness is the philosophical concern with the existence, nature, and attainment of happiness. Some philosophers believe happiness can be understood as the moral goal of life or as an aspect of chance; indeed, in most European languages the term happiness is synonymous with luck . [ 1 ]
The meaning in Greek philosophy refers primarily to ethics. In Christianity, the ultimate end of human existence consists in felicity, Latin equivalent to the Greek eudaimonia ("blessed happiness"), described by the 13th-century philosopher-theologian Thomas Aquinas as a beatific vision of God's essence in the next life. [165]
Sometimes eudaimonia is translated as “happiness”; other times, as “welfare” or “well-being,” showing that no translation is fully adequate to capture its meaning in Greek. Philosopher Joe Sachs emphasizes the importance of the activity of eudaimonia, a “being-at-work” of the human soul. [21]
According to a common interpretation, happiness is the balance of pleasure over pain. This means that a person is happy if they have more pleasure than pain and unhappy if the balance is overall negative. [43] There are also other ways to understand happiness that do not fully align with the traditional account of hedonism.
Sophrosyne (Ancient Greek: σωφροσύνη) is an ancient Greek concept of an ideal of excellence of character and soundness of mind, which when combined in one well-balanced individual leads to other qualities, such as temperance, moderation, prudence, purity, decorum, and self-control. An adjectival form is "sophron". [1]
Pausanias interrupts his Description of Greece (Book 9.35.1–7) to expand upon the various conceptions of the Charites that developed in different parts of mainland Greece and Ionia: The Boeotians say that Eteocles was the first man to sacrifice to the Graces.