Eudaimonia and degrowth: insights for societal transformation

Theo Semertzidis
Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow, the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain

Yoshihito Nakano
Specially Appointed Associate Professor, the Graduate School of Social Design Studies, Rikkyo University, Japan

Eudaimonia is a virtue-laden concept of human wellbeing that has recently seen a resurgence within ecological economics. However, there has been a misunderstanding of what it entails, with its current understanding being rooted within utilitarian principles, creating a dangerous contradiction. Eudaimonia does not translate to mean happiness (common utilitarian misconception) but should lead to a meaningful life based on self-truth and self-responsibility, meaning to know oneself and choose who and how to be. In a eudaimonic context, an individual flourishes within the broader society, both in the present and the future (opening discussions about intra- and intergeneration justice). Eudaimonia is contrasting to hedonic conceptions of wellbeing where one is atomised and isolated, focusing on pleasure through consumption (in the case of a capitalist society). A degrowth future is based on a planned and democratic transformation of the economic system, which in turn aims to reduce ecological impact, along with various aspects of inequality, while improving human wellbeing. The goal of this presentation is to define eudaimonia within the context of degrowth and discuss how it can contribute to societal transformation.

Theo Semertzidis is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He works on wellbeing and ethics within ecological economics and political ecology, with a focus on degrowth values based on eudaimonic principles, from a conceptual perspective to applications in the form of indicators. Before this post, he was the director of the MSc in Sustainable Resources: Economics, Policy and Transitions at University College London (UCL). He holds a PhD in Sustainable Resources and Modelling from University College London (UCL).

Yoshihiro Nakano is a Specially Appointed Associate Professor, at the Graduate School of Social Design Studies, Rikkyo University. His areas of specialisation are social philosophy and critical development studies, especially history of global development, politics of development discourses, and grassroots alternatives. His main research focuses on: (1) history, political economy, and biopolitics of global development and (2) global intellectual history of anti-productivist social theories and epistemologies of the south. He holds a DPhil in Development Studies from the University of Sussex.

gasparatos[at]ifi.u-tokyo.ac.jp
yuichi.tsuchibuchi[at]s.k.u-tokyo.ac.jp
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