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Heroism and Eudaimonia: Sublime Actualization Through the Embodiment of Virtue

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Handbook of Eudaimonic Well-Being

Part of the book series: International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life ((IHQL))

Abstract

The philosophical roots of eudaimonia lie in “Aristotle’s view of the highest human good involving virtue and the realization of one’s potential … It begins with Aristotle’s emphasizing choice and suggesting that virtue, which is central to eudaimonia, involves making the right choices” (Deci and Ryan, J Happiness Stud 9(1):1–11, 2008, pp. 4, 7). Although the Aristotelian meaning of ‘virtue’ is somewhat contested (Keyes & Annas, 2009), its association with heroic action as an ideal state is immediate. Eudaimonic happiness “actively expresses excellency of character or virtue” (Haybron, 2000, p. 3). Heroism and heroes have been considered to be the pinnacle of human excellence and virtue in history. In his reading of Merleau-Ponty’s 1948 address of heroism, Smyth (2010, p. 178) notes that “the hero is someone who ‘lives to the limit … his relation to men and the world’”. Allison and Goethals (2014, p. 167) concur that, “The human tendency to bestow a timeless quality to heroic leadership is the culmination of a pervasive narrative about human greatness [emphasis added] that people have been driven to construct since the advent of language”. This peak state, and the idea of transcendence that is associated with it, go to the basis of the word ‘eudaimonia’, the ‘daemon’, i.e., being taken over by the ‘good spirit’ (Bošković and Šendula Jengić, 2008; Froh et al, 2009).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See: http://www.heroconstruction.org/

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Family and Community Medicine, Clinical and Translational Science Institute, Medical College of Wisconsin, 8701 Watertown Plank Road, 26509, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

    Zeno E. Franco

  2. Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia

    Olivia Efthimiou

  3. Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Philip G. Zimbardo

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  1. Zeno E. Franco
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  2. Olivia Efthimiou
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Correspondence to Zeno E. Franco .

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  1. UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway

    Joar Vittersø

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Franco, Z.E., Efthimiou, O., Zimbardo, P.G. (2016). Heroism and Eudaimonia: Sublime Actualization Through the Embodiment of Virtue. In: Vittersø, J. (eds) Handbook of Eudaimonic Well-Being. International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42445-3_22

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