Happiness is most like a "moment of grace"

[redcomrad]

Yeah, Aristotle wuz a smart guy and he and his students spent a good deal of time investigating ideas like Happiness, but he's dead now. I'm not sure why you are reducing his definition of Happiness to a statement about absolute knowledge or knowledge based on particular communities. Aristotle's works on Epistemological questions and the problems of absolute knowledge raised by Skeptics and Sophists and Platonists and Pre-Socratics...so on...are also hard to lick. His definition of Happiness and the Good, of the Virtues, are tough to lick. His texts are quite systematic and exhibit his vast knowledge of the history of ideas. Backing up to the idea that Happiness may reauire or may be bestowed or earned perhaps by Grace, I suspect that Aristotle idea of Happiness and Fortune is not unlike Pynchon's Grace, as I understand his use of the idea in AGTD.    postscript  nothin wrong with your sentence as far as I know; but, as ancient as I am, I sure ain't no grammarian. I alluded to James Joyce and Emily Dickenson because both play around with the epistemological paradoxes inherent in language and thought. We might get on the line and call back to Eden, use our own birth cords to connect back to the grand mother of all mothers, Eve in Edenville, but we risk perdition. It requires, as N.O. Brown argues in Love's Body, that the Sons and Brothers kill the father, get rid of the family, property, and the state, then establish liberty, equality, fratenity.      ---- On Wed, 26 Jan 2011 22:29:12 -0500 Albert Rolls <alprolls at earthlink.net> wrote ----     The definitions are provided in Aristotle's Ethics.  http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html     Yes, but I wasn´t aware that it had been established that Aristotle was the source of absolute knowledge.    Different communities define excellence of character in different ways. Are you asserting (or are you asserting that Aristotle is asserting) that it is virtuous to conform to the idea of a person who possesses excellence of character in one´s particular community?       Jimmy Jay's Grammar has much devine madness on it, put a winder where we wind wen we were wee and see what way we whishpering bee, buzz, by a fly when we all, like J & M must fly to Tophet or to Edenville.       Yes the sentence of 19:40:51 sucks. Flog me; I was in a rush.   ---- On Wed, 26 Jan 2011 19:40:51 -0500 Albert Rolls <alprolls at earthlink.net> wrote ----   But the meaning of all those abstract terms need definition unless one lives in a community that has agreed upon definitions for them or one has some sort of access to absolute knowledge, maybe a phone line to Edenville. -----Original Message----- From: redcomrad Sent: Jan 26, 2011 6:45 PM To: Cc: Pynchon-L Subject: Re: Happiness is most like a "moment of grace"  Excellence of character is virtue. Happiness is the active life of a virtuous individual or a person of excellent character.    Ah, the Good Life. It is not for most people.       ---- On Wed, 26 Jan 2011 13:35:54 -0500 Albert Rolls <alprolls at earthlink.net> wrote ----   Now define virtue. -----Original Message----- From: redcomrad Sent: Jan 25, 2011 7:16 PM To: pynchon-l Subject: Re: Happiness is most like a "moment of grace"  hard to lick Aristotle's definitions: the happy person is active in accordance with complete virtue.        ---- On Tue, 25 Jan 2011 12:22:07 -0500 Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote ----  I await a successful definition of happiness. What most folks seem to call happiness these days looks to me like an hysterical displacement of anxiety rather than any condition of actual well-being. Might happiness and grace be similar? Even bound as mutually conditional? Perhaps. It would be an interesting essay to pursue. On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 5:35 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote: > And the root of the word comes from the root for "chance"!..... > That TRP!?................................... > > PhilosophyExp Andrew Anthony talks to French philosopher, Pascal Bruckner, about > the nature of #happiness. http://is.gd/SMBLIA > > > > -- Klaatu barada nikto    
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