Problem
Does the centrality of eudaimonia detract from the merits of virtue ethics as an ethical system? Kant, for example, objected to making flourishing (or happiness, suitably understood) the central object of ethics. He charged virtue ethics, as he did utilitarianism, with getting its priorities wrong. On his view, happiness or flourishing are fine things, but he was concerned with whether or not people deserved such things and maintained that making such aims central to ethics turns ethics into a system of hypothetical rather than categorical imperatives. What do you make of this charge?