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Single Idea 5136

[filed under theme 22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 2. Happiness / a. Nature of happiness ]

Full Idea

Candidates for the required constituents of happiness are said to be virtue, or practical reason, or wisdom; others say it is these with the addition of pleasure, and others include favourable external conditions.

Gist of Idea

Happiness seems to involve virtue, or practical reason, or wisdom, or pleasure, or external goods

Source

Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1098b21)

Book Ref

Aristotle: 'Ethics (Nicomachean)', ed/tr. ThomsonJ A K/TredennickH [Penguin 1976], p.78

A Reaction

Characteristic of Aristotle to start from what both ordinary people and philosophers have previously said. By the end of his book (remarkably) wisdom is the only one of these which is excluded from normal human happiness. Wisdom transcends life.

The 18 ideas with the same theme [what is the intrinsic nature of happiness?]:

25 You can be good while asleep, or passive, or in pain [Aristotle]
5136 Happiness seems to involve virtue, or practical reason, or wisdom, or pleasure, or external goods [Aristotle]
5868 Horses, birds and fish are not happy, lacking a divine aspect to their natures [Aristotle]
22753 Happiness for the Stoics was an equable flow of life [Stoic school, by Sext.Empiricus]
13303 A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is [Seneca]
13550 To be always happy is to lack knowledge of one half of nature [Seneca]
6922 Ecstasy is for the neo-Platonist the highest psychological state of man [Plotinus, by Feuerbach]
5756 Happiness is a good which once obtained leaves nothing more to be desired [Boethius]
12927 Happiness is advancement towards perfection [Leibniz]
6252 Happiness is a pleasant sensation, or continued state of such sensations [Hutcheson]
6193 Our happiness is all that matters, not as a sensation, but as satisfaction with our whole existence [Kant]
1452 Happiness is the condition of a rational being for whom everything goes as they wish [Kant]
23274 World history has no room for happiness [Hegel]
4172 Happiness is the swift movement from desire to satisfaction, and then again on to desire [Schopenhauer]
7168 Modest people express happiness as 'Not bad' [Nietzsche]
22497 Deep happiness usually comes from the basic things in life [Foot]
22498 Happiness is enjoying the pursuit and attainment of right ends [Foot]
5079 Pleasure can have a location, and be momentary, and come and go - but happiness can't [Taylor,R]