Who's A Relentless Literalist?

I'm usually accused, but I don't care, since I'm your perpetual adolescent, ever young at heart, of 'relentless' even 'remorseless' 'literalism' (as Grice did accuse Austin).

(I think 'literalim' is not necessarily, as D. M. S. W. suggests, a mark of autism: it's a guy thing, and also a class-thing: people who go by the class of meanings our expressions are literally taken to mean, on occasion, etc.)

But who is a literalist? Consider 'happy'. Grice found the word, 'too vulgar'. "Surely I prefer 'eudaimonia'."

"But 'eudaimonia' is Greek!", Mary said,

"So?"

In "Some reflections on happiness" (now in 2001) he writes:



"Commentators [of Aristotle], such as my
dear old friend and former tutee, J. L. Ackrill,
have disagreed
about the precise interpretation of the word
"eudaemonia" in the works of the Stagirite,
but none, so far as I know, has
suggested what I think of as much the most
plausible conjecture; namely, that "eudaemonia"
is to be understood as the name for that state
or condition

which one's good _daemon_ would
(if he [never it] could)
ensure for one.)

And my good _daemon_
is a being motivated, with respect to me, solely
by concern for my well-being or happiness.

To
change the idiom, "eudaemonia" is the general
characterisation of what

a full-time and
unhampered fairy godmother

would secure for you."
H. P. Grice,
'Some reflections about ends and happiness'
in _Aspects of Reason_, Clarendon, 2001, p.116.