<h1>Introduction: Two kinds of human happiness</h1>
In the Western conception, happiness is often a question of man's most basic goal of survival. From ancient Greece to the present, two typical concepts of happiness have been formed in the West, one is the hedonistic concept of happiness represented by Epicurus and others, in their view, happiness is actually the enjoyment of people's senses and the satisfaction of direct stimulation.
The other is actually the concept of happiness represented by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and others represented by the three sages of ancient Greece.
This concept of happiness is mainly based on rational speculation and the spirit of rationalism, and implements the entire moral and rational standard in life to the end, as the standard for measuring one's own happiness and unhappiness.
And Aristotle's rational concept of happiness, in fact, and the predecessors also have many differences, and more attention is paid to people's direct feelings about happiness and people's concept of being able to truly achieve happiness, he directly formed a certain system of his own concept of happiness from an ethical point of view, and among them, its most unique is the enlightenment of happiness that people can truly achieve.
<h1>1. Aristotle: Happiness equals perfection</h1>
In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, many times happiness is in fact extremely importantly related to what he calls goodness. Aristotle's goodness is actually different from the pursuit of the idea of goodness by Plato and others, but more like a thorough feeling of the best life and the most complete happiness that man can achieve. The most basic connotation of happiness actually comes from the preconditions for obtaining happiness and the grasp of goodness in the process of pursuing happiness. Many times, Aristotle directly interpreted the meaning of happiness with goodness.
Aristotle believed that all everyday actions of man actually come from the good ends that a real person can achieve. For example, people learn art to attain health, while the purpose of planting trees is to beautify the environment, and these purposes are actually goodness, the direct embodiment, that is, external goodness, and this goodness is only a low-level stage of purposefulness of the foundation.
For Aristotle, happiness emanates from inner exploration. Of course, a happy person must be the result of the interaction of external goodness and inner goodness. In Aristotle' view, the inner good is in fact a rationalist view of life with morality and reason as its standards, emphasizing the spiritual satisfaction and happiness of human beings, and in the process of achieving the good, only through the combination of the inner good, that is, the spiritual life and the external good, the sensual purposeful good, can be directly realized through abstraction and reality.
In Aristotle's view, happiness is actually the manifestation of the inner goodness in the activity of virtue and rational practice—happiness is often a realistic situation that can be achieved, and in the process of achieving happiness, it is necessary to start from the inner goodness, plus the external role to practice this virtue, and as long as it can be done better, it means that human virtue can be practiced. Through the passage of time, man's possibility of himself is meant to be higher and higher, and Aristotle's happiness is actually not around man's own external senses. What is more is to achieve the more valuable goodness of life in an infinite environment.
There was Plato before Aristotle. Happiness is actually a virtuous act. And within the framework of his ideas, Plato believed that the good, in fact, can only be achieved through people's grasp of the idea of goodness, which is obviously directly presented as an abstract idea of happiness, and Aristotle's greatest meaning is to pull the happiness of heaven back to the world and become the happiness that everyone can achieve.
<h1>2. Aristotle: What does happiness look like? </h1>
And what does a happy life look like? In Aristotle, to a large extent, life is presented into several levels, the first level, is the life of pleasure, many people regard the happiness in life as good, and take care of it, but in fact, the physiological sensory satisfaction of eating, drinking and having fun in life is actually a large part dependent on human sensual life, but the sensual life without its own thoughts is actually no different from wild animals, and the biggest difference between humans and animals is that animals cannot think. And people have the ability to think.
This rational ability to think is actually the source of man's pursuit of true happiness, and only through rational thinking, recognizing the purpose he wants to achieve, and recognizing his own limitations, can he achieve a happy life, and in this process, such as virtue and reason, these are the necessary aspects.
On another level, Aristotle argued that people regard honor as happiness, the adoration of the crowd and the various and other people's emotions as their own happiness, and to a large extent people pursue this honor not because they think they have this more open feeling of happiness, but only because they gain knowledge of themselves in the affirmation of others. But unfortunately, under the condition of gaining the recognition of others, many times, it does not mean that it is good enough.
And if immersed in the praise and honor of others, it means that a person still loses his ability to think and relies on external conditions, and many times Aristotle believes that virtue is more important than honor, because honor is only the psychological satisfaction of people's daily lives. True happiness is not just an external satisfaction, but an affirmation of oneself, which cannot come from other people, but only from oneself.
Therefore, in the end, Aristotle believed that the happy life of man actually comes from contemplation and thinking. Thinking is the most meaningful practical activity in human life, and in the process of thinking, a person reaches an understanding of his own limitations and tries to understand those infinite things, of course, man cannot become a god, nor can he live a divine life. Many times in Aristotle's case, man's happiness is actually the most realistic happiness of man, not the happiness of God, and man's happiness can be achieved, that is, by grasping his own virtue in thinking, affirming himself in morality and various aspects through the improvement and development of virtue, and only then can he find the position of life in which he is located.
<h1>3. Aristotle: How to achieve happiness? </h1>
On the question of how happiness is practiced, Aristotle argued that many times a person's origin does not represent how a person's life will progress. One cannot attain one's own happiness through aspects such as beauty and wealth. And in the discussion of how to achieve happiness, many times we need to understand one thing, that is, the use of virtue and the possession of virtue are two things, many people have virtue, but how to maintain virtue, or how to understand how to do it in practice is also a very important thing, in Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" has this related expression:
How should a happy person use virtue? In fact, it is the middle way.
The essence of the rational spirit lies in the Middle Way. The Middle Way is impartial, but it is not a complete intermediateization, but a rational thinking in practice, through the grasp of the truest nature of things, to achieve an understanding of the key to practical activities, for example, Aristotle once pointed out:
Excess and inadequacy are evil, and moderation is virtue.
The Middle Way is in line with the standards of all people, as long as everyone understands the standards and fundamentals of each thing in real life through the perspective of rational thinking, he can realize what he should do to be considered appropriate, and through how to do each thing, people can completely reach the critical point of happiness.
Happiness is the most authentic thought of one's life, through which one attains the grasp of the Middle Way and the use of virtue. True happiness is not merely the happiness of external pleasures, but the contemplation of the inner rational happiness of life.
<h1>Conclusion: The happiness and morality of modern people</h1>
In this regard, for modern people, Aristotle's concept of happiness also has this extremely important significance, morality and conscience have often become the most important part of the entire social development, through this part of people can obtain proper social interaction, not only rely on the role of law, in this part, Aristotle and our traditional culture have also reached a part of the fit.
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