I argue that the many similarities between what aristotle says about "eudaimonia" and what we say about happiness justify the traditional translation of "eudaimonia" as "happiness." it is not widely realized that "eudaimonia" involves a psychological state much like the one we call "happiness." nor is it generally recognized that both "eudaimonia" and "happiness" involve a standard for evaluating lives. For aristotle, The standard is objective and inflexible; for us, It is subjective and flexible. Thus, When we call someone happy (...) and aristotle says he is not "eudaimon", We are not using two different concepts, But rather two different ways of evaluating lives. (shrink)

“We Need Not hesitate to translate the word eudaimonia by the English ‘happiness’”. So Burnet wrote in 1900, but the hardening consensus is that he was wrong. The differences between the two notions, it is now commonly supposed, are too many and too deep to think that happiness and eudaimonia are very closely related; and consequently “happiness”, the long-established conventional translation, will seriously mislead us in understanding the nature of Aristotelian eudaimonia.