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Aristotle Happiness

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Recommended: Aristotle's understanding of happiness

According to Aristotle, happiness is the ultimate goal that everyone seeks. “Happiness is of all things the one most desirable, and it is not counted as one good thing among many others” (p. 51). He explains that people have a different interpretation of what happiness really is, he explains that everyone believes to be happy by “living well” and “doing well.” However, Aristotle states in page 58 that “happiness is a certain activity in the soul in conformity with perfect virtue” and only certain people can obtain happiness and this is only if they perform noble actions. “Nobody would call a man just who does not enjoy acting justly, nor generous who does not enjoy generous actions” (p. 54). And if an individual performs noble actions towards others then they can reach happiness, but only if those actions are performed with the “help of instruments, as it were: friends, wealth, and political power” (p.54). Aristotle explains that happiness consists in living in accordance with reason. Aristotle, “first starts by explaining that the “soul consists of two elements, one irrational and one rational” (p.58). Then on page 59 he states that “in morally strong and morally weak men we …show more content…

68). In book VIII, Aristotle explains the importance of friendship and the meaning of a real friend, “those who wish for their friends’ good for their friends’ sake are friends in the truest sense, since their attitude is determined by what their friends are and by incidental considerations” (p. 66). Besides describing different friendships, he also explains that the way we love our friends and our feelings towards our friends is the same love and feelings we have towards ourselves. “when a good man becomes a friend he becomes a good to the person whose friend he is. Thus, each partner both loves his own good and makes an equal return in the good he wishes for his partner and in the pleasure he gives him” (p.

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