Chapter 5 Exercises

Exercise 1: The Function Argument, Applied

Aristotle's function argument asks: what is the distinctive function of a human being, and what does it mean to perform that function excellently?

Now personalize it. Spend 20 minutes with these questions. Write your answers — not to show to anyone, but to actually think:

Part A: Your capacities Make a list of your genuine capacities — the things you can do that, when you do them well, feel like an expression of something distinctively you. Don't list credentials or achievements. List the underlying capacities: you reason clearly under pressure; you can help people feel genuinely understood; you can take complex ideas and make them accessible; you persist through difficulty in a particular domain; you notice things that others miss. Be honest and specific.

Part B: Exercise and atrophy Which of those capacities are you currently exercising well? Which are atrophying — going unused or underdeveloped because life has pointed you elsewhere? For each capacity in the second list, write one sentence about why it's not being exercised.

Part C: The gap The gap between your exercised capacities and your full capacities is what Aristotle would point to as the gap between your current life and eudaimonia. What is your gap? Is it acceptable to you? What would it take to close it?

Exercise 2: The Hedonic Treadmill Audit

Think back five years. Make a list of five things you wanted badly at that time — things you believed would significantly improve your life or make you substantially happier. They might include:

  • A relationship status change
  • A job, promotion, or professional achievement
  • A material object (a place to live, a possession)
  • A social outcome (being accepted somewhere, being recognized for something)
  • Freedom from something you found burdensome

For each item, note: did you get it? And if so, how long did the happiness boost last? Where are you now with your feelings about it?

After completing the audit, write a paragraph answering this question: Are there any items on your current ambitions list that are likely to go the same way as the items on your five-years-ago list? What does the audit tell you about how you should adjust what you're pursuing?

Exercise 3: Mapping Your PERMA

Using Seligman's PERMA model as a diagnostic tool, rate each dimension of your current life on a 1–10 scale. Then write 2–3 sentences about why you gave each rating:

  • P — Positive emotions: How often do you experience genuine positive emotions (not just absence of negative ones)? What generates them?
  • E — Engagement: When do you lose yourself in what you're doing? How often does this happen in your current life?
  • R — Relationships: How many relationships do you have that involve genuine mutual care — people who know you well and whom you know well? How do these relationships feel?
  • M — Meaning: To what degree does your current life feel like it's in service of something larger than immediate self-interest?
  • A — Accomplishment: Are you pursuing goals that genuinely matter to you, and making real progress toward them?

After rating all five, look at the pattern. Which dimensions are weakest? What would it take to move them up by two points?

Exercise 4: Epicurus's Challenge

Epicurus would challenge you to examine whether what you think you need is what you actually need. Take your list of current ambitions — the things you're working toward, the life you're trying to build. For each major ambition, apply the Epicurean filter:

  1. Is this a genuine need — something that contributes to basic security, friendship, or tranquility? Or is it a socially constructed desire that generates more anxiety than satisfaction when pursued?

  2. Is this something I actually want, or something that would look right to others — my parents, my professional peers, the narrative my life seems to be following?

  3. If I achieve this, do I believe I'll actually be more tranquil and satisfied? Or is there evidence from past experience that it will simply reveal the next unfulfilled desire?

This is not an argument for radical simplification or withdrawal. Epicurus isn't right about everything, and the life of the philosophical garden is not for everyone. But the exercise is valuable because many people are pursuing things that they've never actually examined — that they've absorbed from their environment without asking whether those things are actually good for them.

Exercise 5: Happiness vs. Meaning

Think of a period in your life that was genuinely meaningful — when you felt that what you were doing mattered, that your life had direction and purpose. It doesn't have to have been pleasant. It might have been difficult, demanding, even painful. But it felt like it counted.

Now think of a period that was pleasant but low in meaning — comfortable, enjoyable, but somehow empty.

Write about both periods. Then answer: which period are you more glad to have lived? Which would you recommend to a close friend? Which period do you think contributed more to the kind of person you are now?

After writing, look at what the difference was. What was present in the meaningful period that was absent in the pleasant one? What does that tell you about what you should be prioritizing?

Exercise 6: The Obituary Test

This is a difficult exercise, but it's one of the most useful. Write two obituaries for yourself:

Obituary A: The life you are currently living, extrapolated forward. If you continue on your current trajectory — your current job, your current relationships, your current habits and choices — what will the story of your life look like? Write it honestly.

Obituary B: The life you actually want. The one that, when you imagine looking back from the end, would feel well-lived. What would you want to have done, built, contributed, been?

After writing both, compare them. What's the gap? Is the gap between A and B large or small? Are the differences things you have the power to change? What's preventing you from living more toward Obituary B?

Progressive Project: Your Eudaimonia Section

Add a section to your Personal Philosophy document titled "My Account of Flourishing." This section should be 400–600 words and address:

  1. What flourishing looks like for me, specifically. Not in general — specifically. What capacities do you have that, when exercised excellently, constitute your best self? What kind of life allows those capacities to develop and be expressed?

  2. The conditions you need. Aristotle acknowledges external goods. What do you genuinely need — not what you want, but what you actually need — to flourish? Health? A particular kind of community? A certain kind of work? Intellectual challenge? Specific relationships?

  3. The honest assessment. Is your current life consistent with your account of flourishing? Where is the gap? What would you have to change?

  4. The happiness/meaning tradeoff. Where in your life have you chosen (or are you choosing) between happiness in the moment and longer-term meaning? What framework guides those choices?

Save this section. You'll return to it in Chapter 10, after encountering Stoicism, and you'll find it interesting to see whether your answers change.