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Single Idea 12927
[filed under theme 22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 2. Happiness / a. Nature of happiness
]
Full Idea
Happiness, or lasting contentment, consists of continual advancement towards a greater perfection.
Gist of Idea
Happiness is advancement towards perfection
Source
Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Antoine Arnauld [1686], 1690.03.23)
Book Ref
Leibniz,Gottfried: 'The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence', ed/tr. Mason,HT/Parkinson,GHR [Manchester UP 1967], p.171
A Reaction
To the modern mind this smacks of the sort of hubris to which only the religious mind can aspire, but it's still rather nice. The idea of grubby little mammals approaching perfection sounds wrong, but which other animal has even thought of perfection?
The
18 ideas
with the same theme
[what is the intrinsic nature of happiness?]:
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25
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You can be good while asleep, or passive, or in pain
[Aristotle]
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5136
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Happiness seems to involve virtue, or practical reason, or wisdom, or pleasure, or external goods
[Aristotle]
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5868
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Horses, birds and fish are not happy, lacking a divine aspect to their natures
[Aristotle]
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22753
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Happiness for the Stoics was an equable flow of life
[Stoic school, by Sext.Empiricus]
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13303
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A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is
[Seneca]
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13550
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To be always happy is to lack knowledge of one half of nature
[Seneca]
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6922
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Ecstasy is for the neo-Platonist the highest psychological state of man
[Plotinus, by Feuerbach]
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5756
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Happiness is a good which once obtained leaves nothing more to be desired
[Boethius]
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12927
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Happiness is advancement towards perfection
[Leibniz]
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6252
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Happiness is a pleasant sensation, or continued state of such sensations
[Hutcheson]
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6193
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Our happiness is all that matters, not as a sensation, but as satisfaction with our whole existence
[Kant]
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1452
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Happiness is the condition of a rational being for whom everything goes as they wish
[Kant]
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23274
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World history has no room for happiness
[Hegel]
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4172
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Happiness is the swift movement from desire to satisfaction, and then again on to desire
[Schopenhauer]
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7168
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Modest people express happiness as 'Not bad'
[Nietzsche]
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22497
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Deep happiness usually comes from the basic things in life
[Foot]
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22498
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Happiness is enjoying the pursuit and attainment of right ends
[Foot]
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5079
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Pleasure can have a location, and be momentary, and come and go - but happiness can't
[Taylor,R]
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