“What [Xenophanes] says about Pythagoras goes like this:
People say that one day, when he was passing by as a puppy was being beaten, he pitied him and uttered this line: ‘Stop, don’t beat him, in truth, his is a soul of a dear friend of mine, one I recognized when I heard him cry.”
“For this reason we must examine whether or not it is possible for the study of the philosophers to bring us [happiness].”
Quare hoc videndum est, possitne nobis hoc ratio philosophorum dare.
Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 2.1 (1219a25)
“Let the work of the mind be the performance of life—and what this means is using life and being awake (for sleep is some kind of a rest and cessation of life). As a result, since the work of the mind and its virtue are identical, then the work of virtue is an earnest life.
This, then, is the complete good, which is itself happiness. For it is clear from what we have argued—as we said that happiness was the best thing; the goals and the greatest of the goods are in the mind, but aspects of the mind are either a state of being or an action—it is clear that, since an action is better than a state and the best action is better than the best state, that the performance of virtue is the greatest good of the mind. Happiness, then, is the action of a good mind.”
ψυχή: can be translated into English as “spirit” or “soul” instead of “mind”. I avoided the former to sidestep the implication that Aristotle is making some kind of a mystical argument; I avoided the latter because it has such strong religious associations in English.
Seneca De Beneficiis 22
“A just reason for happiness is seeing that a friend is happy—even better, is to make a friend happy.”
iusta enim causa laetitiae est laetum amicum videre, iustior fecisse
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 9.11 on Pyrrho
“But Philo the Athenian, who was his friend, used to say that he often called to mind Democritus and then Homer, wondering at him and constantly saying “just as the generation of leaves so are the generations of men”. And he liked the fact that Homer compared human beings to wasps, flies and birds. He also used to add these lines: “But, friend, die too: why do you mourn like this? / Patroklos also died and he was much better than you.” He would recite that along with all the passages which attested to the uncertain and empty pursuits, the childish simplicity of humankind.
Poseidonios also passes down a certain story like this about him. When his shipmates were exceedingly anxious because of a storm, he was calm and unshaken in his spirit. After he pointed to a piglet on the boat who was eating, he said that it was right for a wise person to settle into such an untroubled state.”
“Apollodorus the Athenian in his Summary of Beliefs, because he wants to demonstrate that the works of Epicurus were written with personal force and were prepared with far fewer quotations than the books of Chrysippos, says in this very wording: “if the books of [Chrysippos] were scrubbed of all the superfluous quotations, only empty paper would be left to him.”
So much for Apollodorus. The old women who used to sit next to [Chrysippos], according to Diocles, used to claim that he wrote 500 lines each day. Hekatôn reports that he turned to philosophy because the property left to him by his father was confiscated to the royal treasury.”
“For when the barbarians and the Greeks were struggling against each other around Troy because of one man’s lack of self-control they endured the most terrible calamities—some in war, some in the return home—and the god assigned a punishment for that single injustice for one thousand and ten years, providing an oracle for the sack of Troy and requesting the journey of maidens from Locris to the temple of Athena in Troy.
[Pythagoras] used to harangue the young men regarding education too, demanding that they consider how strange it would be to judge rational thought the most desirable of all things when one must judge concerning everything else using it, yet people spend no time nor toil in practicing it. And this is when care given to the body is similar to worthless friends in abandoning you quickly; education, however, is like the most good and noble companions who stay by your side right up to death—and, for some, it provides immortal glory after life is over.”
After he had been condemned to die by the Athenians and when his wife Xanthippe was weeping and saying “Socrates, you are dying unjustly”, Socrates the Athenian said to her “would you want me to die justly?”
“For when the barbarians and the Greeks were struggling against each other around Troy because of one man’s lack of self-control they endured the most terrible calamities—some in war, some in the return home—and the god assigned a punishment for that single injustice for one thousand and ten years, providing an oracle for the sack of Troy and requesting the journey of maidens from Locris to the temple of Athena in Troy.
[Pythagoras] used to harangue the young men regarding education too, demanding that they consider how strange it would be to judge rational thought the most desirable of all things when one must judge concerning everything else using it, yet people spend no time nor toil in practicing it. And this is when care given to the body is similar to worthless friends in abandoning you quickly; education, however, is like the most good and noble companions who stay by your side right up to death—and, for some, it provides immortal glory after life is over.”
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