Eudaimonia in Anton Chekhov's “A Story Without a Title” Raghda Maher College

Is Eudaimonia really attainable? One of the most important works that adopted this concept is Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle was one of Plato’s students, but he rejected his teacher’s logic that reality lay beyond the everyday world in the realm of the Forms. Aristotle, in contrast, reaches forward to the world by observation and experience since he was a very practical philosopher. Despite the fact that his Nicomachean Ethics is only a collection of lecture notes, it remains one of the most important works in the history of ethics. In this work, he discussed many fundamental issues, and one of the most problematic fundamental questions “How should we live a satisfying life?”. In order to find an answer, Aristotle proposed his function argument which claims that every action is aimed at some goal (end), and gave a description of how to lead such a life. He stated that the goal of human existence is happiness. Unfortunately, “happiness” is a weak translation of what Aristotle introduced Eudaimonia. A better translation is “wellbeing”, “flourishing”, or “fulfillment”.

These ideas of Aristotle can be elicited from the short story “A story without A title” that was written by Anton Chekhov in 1887, and published in 1888....