Aristotle "happiness On The Study

Rooted in nourishing humanism of Greek world, and based on rich theory resources about happiness by thinkers of Socrates' time, Aristotle sets up a comparatively complete Happiness ethical theory. He looks happiness in a more practical way than metaphysical way, as he defines that happiness is to "act with your soul in accordance with virtue". For Aristotle the soul is the form or actual functioning of living things. Virtue is then the moral excellence obtained through habitual acts and intellectual excellence obtained through experience and learning. Above all this, he sets contemplative life as the supreme happiness among all kinds of secular contentment. Inherited from his teachers-Socrates and Plato, Aristotle connects his ethics closely with politics, which mainly presents the idea for individual's happiness being tightly jointed with the state. Aristotle's Happiness theory not only makes a considerable impact on the relative beliefs in the Middle Ages and modern western world, but also influences greatly on today's western society. A. Maclntyre is such a scholar who attempts to help the virtue-lost society out by restating Aristotle's Happiness theory. However, without the same background of the old virtuous Greece, it is very doubtful that this theoretical try is feasible. Rather to say, we should not simply copy, but have to convert the glorious theory of Aristotle.