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millchopcuss t1_iycvihv wrote

It seems like you are pointing out a shortcoming in our terminology. This is an interesting thing to key on, because it seems to capture some of the trouble with our therapeutic approaches. Chasing hedonia without a framework for a meaningful life may, in many instances, be the actual cause of the difficulty.

Eudaimonia is a tricky term. We don't exactly think in terms of daimons anymore. It looks like hedonia was used to encompass both forms of happiness initially, and the term eudaimonia was dredged up out of Plato when a need arose for more nuance. To form an opposite, you'd have to go with something like 'maldemonia' and this whole demon thing starts to intrude on it's utility.

Just the same, this right here is the fault line in therapeutic practice today. The need for a better set of terms for the moving parts of a well built life is enormous.

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