Happiness for Aristotle

Essay by kqnderUniversity, Bachelor'sA+, November 2006

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In our worlds, feelings have a considerable part in human's life. Feelings are indicator of what people have in their minds. That's when they think something goes wrong, it can be understood, at this time there is a trouble in their faces. Like this, there are a number of feelings people have. However, undoubtedly the best one of them is happiness. It sounds very relaxing, even only this word said to people, it is a reason to smile. As it can be understood, happiness is a feeling which can make you the best and richest man in the world, or in other words, it makes you laugh. However, evaluation of happiness must be different from this. In order to define what really happiness is quality of a whole life is more proper because it requires complete life and complete virtue.

The first reason why happiness should be defined as a quality of whole life is necessity of a complete life.

Health, wealth or the other goods people have are acceptable contribution for the happiness. However, happiness cannot be evaluated without considering all of them. As Mortimer states, "... happiness consist in accumulation, through the course of whole lifetime all the goods - health, wealth, knowledge, friends, etc. , ..."(35) There are a number of people who has great wealth and knowledge but being unhealthy or not having enough friends are acceptable reason to be considered unhappy. As illustration, Sakıp Sabancı, who died last year, was one of the richest man in Turkey and also in the world. He could buy whatever he wants and he achieved his all goals. However, he was unhappy and he was summarizing his unhappiness by the sentence " I have car factories but these do not make any sense since my son...