This chapter finds that Augustine self-consciously departed from Stoicism and Platonism (while remaining within eudaimonism) in finding that there were other natural objects of human beings’ eros-love besides the highest good. This finding leads to a new explanation of Augustine’s distinction between use and enjoyment and to a new explanation of his view that grief would be found not only in the lives of the vicious but in the lives of the virtuous as well.

This chapter notes that current scholarship on Augustine’s idea of pagan virtue and current scholarship on his political thought contain different, and conflicting, interpretations of his notions of virtue and vice, or sin. This chapter proposes that to determine which interpretation is correct we need to situate Augustine’s moral thought in relation to the ancient moral tradition of eudaimonism. Oliver O’Donovan and Nicholas Wolterstorff have proposed that Augustine broke with classical eudaimonism, but this chapter argues that their interpretation of the Stoic and Platonic tradition in eudaimonism is incorrect, and that a correct understanding of this tradition leads to the conclusion that Augustine in fact remained faithful to the eudaimonist approach to ethics.

This chapter asks whether Augustine criticised Stoicism and Platonism because he thought that there was something fundamentally flawed about the eudaimonist approach to ethics, or whether he criticised Stoicism and Platonism because he thought that these philosophies had insufficiently understood eudaimonism itself. It finds that the latter explanation is correct: in reaching this conclusion, this chapter establishes that Augustine defined virtue and vice, or sin, from within the eudaimonist tradition, making use of the ideas of love as eros and philia, and of the highest good, or summum bonum.

Chapter 5 shows that Kierkegaard does not reject prudence or self-interest as antieudaimonism tends to do. Instead, he develops a noneudaimonistic ethics and theology, in which morality overrides prudence in cases of conflict. Still, his concept of the highest good (eternal happiness) involves a synthesis of morality and prudence, in which happiness is conditioned by morality. Like Kant, Kierkegaard develops a noneudaimonistic “highest good” and rejects both predestination and Pelagianism, sketching an intermediary view that combines human agency with divine grace. However, he departs from Kant by combining a modern account of alterity, in which morality is essentially other-regarding, with the idea that morality is Christocentric, since it concerns imitating Christ and serving the neighbor. The result is an account of morality and happiness which is not only broadly Augustinian and Kantian but also highly modern.

Chapter 4 discusses Kierkegaard’s elusive critique of ethical eudaimonism. It is shown that Kierkegaard develops and radicalizes an influential Kantian critique of eudaimonism, according to which ethical eudaimonism entails egoism and instrumentalism concerning virtue that make morality second to self-interest. In the late twentieth century, discussions of this familiar critique have been renewed by the reemergence of virtue ethics and eudaimonism. Still, many share the worry that eudaimonism involves an objectionable egoism and instrumentalism concerning virtue. Although Kierkegaard’s critique of eudaimonism is controversial and more successful against hedonistic eudaimonism (Epicureanism) than Stoicism or Aristotelianism, it still seems largely defensible. At least, reconstructions indicate that genuine (noninstrumental) other-regard is incompatible with eudaimonism’s focus on personal happiness (eudaimonia) as the highest good. Kierkegaard thus seems to succeed in weakening ethical eudaimonism and in developing a noneudaimonistic view that is broadly Kantian.