For Aquinas, happiness is the perfection of the creature. As for happiness, its definition might be moral‐laden or morally‐neutral. Aristotle set forth a moral‐laden definition of happiness as “activity of soul in accordance with virtue” exercised over a long life and supported by additional goods such as money and health (Aristotle, 1941: 943). Lastly, he asserts that “happiness is a certain sort of activity of the soul in accord with virtue.” In brief, virtue makes man happy. Moral virtue comes from training and habit, and generally is a state of character that is a mean between vices of excess and deficiency. Aristotle refers to virtue as the potential excellence of an individual. "HAPPINESS IS A VIRTUE, NOT ITS REWARD." Socrates says this excellence is what a person strives to achieve in order to attain happiness and that this excellence comes from the soul. Like the utilitarians, Aristotle argued that happiness and virtue were inextricably linked. And, this happiness does not involve any fortune. If fitting happiness is just one amongst several constituents of well-being, then the relation between well-being and virtue is such that, necessarily, if the external circumstances are propitious, virtue tends to increase the person’s well-being with respect to one of its constituents. For example, Aristotle portrays the virtue of courage as a mean between the extremes of rashness, an excess, and cowardice, a deficiency. “Happiness is not the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself; nor do we delight in happiness because we restrain from our lusts; but on the contrary, because we delight in it, therefore we are able to restrain them.” ― Benedict de Spinoza My grea t friend, being the most godly person in my life at present, is the definition of a man striving to be completely virtuous, so I attempted to look at his life and his happiness — a test to see if virtue brings about happiness. In a word, a happy life is a complete life. In contemporary thought, virtue-based happiness is endorsed in the writings of various world religions as well as secular humanism. For Aristotle, virtue is a characteristic which achieves a mean or middle position between extremes. Category: Virtue, Happiness, & the Meaning of Life Episode 32: The Therapeutic Fiction of David Foster Wallace In this episode, I am joined by one of the founding editors of The Point, Jon Baskin, to discuss the prospects of philosophical literary criticism and how we can … Hence, both complete life and complete virtue are necessary to be happy. Aristotle identified friendship as being one of the most important virtues in achieving the goal of eudaimonia (Pursuit of Happiness, 2008). Baruch Spinoza was born in the Netherlands on November 24th, 1632. As I questioned my own happiness, I turned to God and how he defines virtue, morals, values. Aquinas recognizes that humans seek a happiness fitting their nature as rational embodied beings, a happiness that comes out of a life lived in accordance with the natural law and our natural inclinations for things like physical pleasure, relationships, society, and even knowledge of God. Dying at the age of 44, Spinoza’s work wasn’t fully recognized until well after his death. That moral virtue is a mean, then, and in what sense it is so, and that it is a mean between two vices, the one involving excess, the other deficiency, and that it is such because its character is to aim at what is intermediate in passions and in actions, has been sufficiently stated. Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash. “Human good turns out to be activity of soul in accordance with virtue” (Nicomachean Ethics, p. 52/2). He contended that in aiming for happiness, the most important factor is to have ‘complete virtue’ or – in other words – good moral character (Pursuit of Happiness, 2008). 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