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Hello, does happiness mean living a life of pleasure or one of virtue?

It's an old question and the Roman poet Horace attempted to answer it when he wrote

Not the owner of many possessions. Will you be right to call happy?

He more rightly deserves the name of happy who knows how to use the God's gifts wisely and to put up with

The rough poverty and who fears dishonor more than death. It seems a noble sentiment in that rather antiquated

Translation but for the Greek's office for his mark us this sort of attitude is the epitome of moral weakness for him

Poverty was miserable and happiness flowed from wealth and power over men an idea so persuasive that Plato wrote the

Republic in response to its challenge

What have our philosophers made of the compulsion to be happy and how much does this ancient debate still define what it means to be happy today

Are we entitled to health wealth and the pursuit of pleasure or is true happiness something else entirely?

We're meant to discuss the philosophy of happiness is Angie Hobbes lecture in philosophy at the University of Warwick

An author of Plato and the hero

Simon Blackburn professor of philosophy at Cambridge University and author to take but one book again of being good

And Antony Grayling author of the meaning of things and read in philosophy at Birkbeck University of London

Angie Hobbes the Greek word for happiness is I believe I'm a near

I'd a man here. What did they mean by it in general terms? You've told me I'd have renounced it first. They'll explain what it means

Yes, the basic meaning of you diamond here is having a good guardian spirit and it comes to mean in practice something like flourishing or living an

Objectively desirable life in other words it describes an objective situation rather than a purely subjective psychological

state

There was even a debate about whether your you diamond here could be affected by what happens after your death

...