Researching Into Aristotle's Happiness

Recalling the history, both abroad and home, happiness is a problem that all people around the world focus on. Especially in the current of China, to research into happiness is very important. Aristotle provides much wonderful thought for us, which is not groundless. The Greek's understanding of happiness was shaped by the polis' s characteristics and the citizens' state of lives and spirit. Aristotle inherited, criticized simultaneously, the thought of happiness of others philosophers who before himself, especially Socrates and Plato. Aristotle's thought is based on his understanding of human nature: human has the animal property, human has reason, human is social animal inborn. Happiness is the supreme good; the realization of activities of mind witch is in accordance with virtue. And the happiest life is contemplation. In addition to this, in Aristotle's opinion, to fulfill happiness we need some conditions. At the first of all, extrinsic good and the body's good, wealth, honor, friendship and so on. Second, the fulfillment of happiness needs to comply with the principle of mean and practice in accordance with virtue. What's more, the good legislation and the good regime are beneficial to the happiness of people.With more and more scholars researching into Aristotle's ethical thought, it brings an argument about his conception of happiness. This argument could be divided into two groups: the inclusivism and the intellectualism. The inclusivism holds that the concept of happiness is all-inclusive, but the intellectualism believes that just contemplation is happiness. The essence of the argument, however, is that the two groups misunderstand Aristotle. Actually, Aristotle putting forward different conception of happiness was according to different people. On one hand, this was a kind of educational method; on the other hand, it helped to resolve the problem of “Philosophy and Political”. When we evaluate Aristotle's thought of happiness, we not only stricture its limitation, but more should praise it.