“WELFARE, LIVING ACCORDING TO VIRTUE”

Nowadays we observe the collapse of the cultural structures of society, the criterion for assessing people’s welfare in recent decades is the investment exclusively in material wealth and that the rules and laws of truth, love, justice, solidarity have been derailed from their archetypal meaning. Also, people to be overwhelmed by fears and excessive needs and to separate themselves more and more from their true selves. The result of all this is the desperate search for solutions to everyday issues financial, labor, relationships and recourses that will remove the uncontrollable anxiety, the sadness, the guilt and they will signal a meaning-motivation for their lives.

According to scientific studies by the World Health Organization, there has been an increase in mental disorders in recent years. About 25% of the world’s population faces a mental health problem. The European Health Union is promoting a new integrated approach to mental health, a first important step towards equating mental and physical health.

It is obvious to every thinking person that we need a different way of life than the one we had adopted as the “Western way”, to lead us to a new point of reference that will signify the course of our lives.

In Ancient Greek tragedy, at the climax of the drama, when the problems and the conflicts experienced by the protagonists led to a dead end, the “deus ex machina” unexpectedly appeared to provide a solution.

We appeal to Ancient Greek Philosophy to intervene in the irregular and disorderly “movement of our lives” in order to restore eurythmy. We study Greek Mythology, mainly through the texts of Hesiod and the Homeric Epics, in order to relate to “the microcosm of our existence, but also the macrocosm of creation of which we are a part” (Plato, Timaeus). Modern Philosophy and Psychology are helpers.

The program “Welfare, living according to virtue” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics) as a way of life, it has as a theoretical background the ancient Greek Welfare: “Efzin” as it emerges from the ancient Greek Philosophical texts. It concerns true welfare achieved by cultivating the Virtues of the soul as opposed to false welfare as a result of investing exclusively in material goods.

The cultivation of Virtues shows us another reality to live and it is possible if we choose it.

“Beneath the reality in which we live and exist, there is another and completely different reality” (Friedrich Nietzsche).

The search for “WELFARE” (EFZIN) as the highest good is a necessity, as the chains of social and mental patterns derail us from it (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract).

The truth, the justice, the saneness and the prudence, the VIRTUES make life happy and praiseworthy (Plato, Laws).

In the Memorabilia of Xenophon, Book IV, Socrates asks Euthydemus if he is aware of the existence of the inscription at the entrance of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Euthydemus replies that he has seen the inscription “KNOW THYSELF”. “Do you really know yourself?” Socrates says to him. “Of course,” Euthydemus replies. “Is it possible to not know myself, I am not so immature and crude that I don’t know who I am.” Socrates says to him “However, if what you know is only your name and your external features, while ignoring your true potential?” (which your soul is hiding?).

With “KNOW THYSELF” the Virtues of the soul are cultivated.

With the Virtues, we know and we embellish the three parts of our soul (Plato, Republic). We start from the appetitive part (epithymetikon) of the soul which is all our desires for wealth, fame, success, all our search for material possessions and our focus on them as our only reality. They are habits, addictions, impulses, the satisfaction of our excessive “false” needs. They are corrected by the Virtue of Saneness – temperance.

We learn that we are not only a body, as humans, but also a soul. So, beyond the needs of the physical body, it is necessary to take care of and to know our soul also. We take over the spirited (thymoeides) part of the soul. They are our feelings, the fears, the guilt, the anger, the sadness… and beliefs that support them cognitively. “They don’t love me”, “I can’t”, “others define my life”, “happiness isn’t here and if it is, it’s not for me”… The Virtue of Saneness again corrects and with Valor the new knowledge is experienced. “Theory and Practice”! (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics).

The Rational part (Logistikon) of the soul is embellished as much as it is possible for each one with the Virtue of prudence. The right direction of the mind. (Socrates, Cratylus).

We work by knowing ourselves step by step towards the Alki of our life. (Alki = eupsychia, dictionary of ancient Greek language Liddell & Scott).

Virtue is the unhindered movement of the soul and it is elected, it is chosen (Plato, Cratylus). The Virtues move the soul into its depth, into the subconscious as Carl Jung’s Analytical Psychology of depth tells us. The phenomenological method is designed to reveal and to describe the structures of the inner meaning of living experience as the philosophy of phenomenology tells us. Living experiences are the traumas of the past, as the science of psychoanalysis tells us. The monsters we will encounter in the depth of our soul as Hesiod bequeathed us to the “Theogony”. “KNOW THYSELF” is not a recipe. It is the ability of the soul to function. It is taking responsibility for oneself. It is work and it is a CHOICE.

“Take the road that is opposite to the usual and you will almost always do well” (Jean-Jacques Rousseau).