Virtue and eudaimonia in Rosalind Hursthouse's moral philosophy

When we talk about normative ethics, during the last fifty years we have been witnessing an unexpected but, having in mind problems of traditional as well as contemporary ethical outlooks, understandable return to Aristotle. Among recent works that contributed to the attempt not only to revive but also to establish the position of virtue ethics as an equal to the utilitarian and deontological theories in the actual ethical debates, Rosalind Hersthouse's book On Virtue Ethics is especially prominent. Rosalind Hursthouse adopts from Aristotle not only the concept of virtue, but also the concept of true happiness (eudaimonia), trying to stay faithful to the spirit of Aristotle's thought. However, she understands the relation of these concepts in a somewhat different manner than Aristotle, which results in certain structural differences among their theories. However, in order to be able to answer the question to what degree Hursthouse really follows Aristotle in her moral philosophy, it is first necessary to understand what is the relation between virtue and eudaimonia in her theory. Thus, our goal in this paper will be partly to make more explicit and partly to amend the understanding of the relation between virtue and true happiness which Rosalind Hursthouse merely hints at rather than systematically develops in her book On Virtue Ethics.