Page 11 - GALIET OF BEAUTIFUL UNOIA AND EUDAIMONIA: ARISTOTLE IV

happiness can be achieved only by a life devoted to philosophical contemplation. Happiness does not exist in lives devoted to political activity or practical tasks, or one dedicated to speculative contemplations, let’s say, of the stock market. If we choose to contemplate the stock market, for example, he might say that we have reduced our beings to that which is transitory, culturally defined and episodic. However, I believe that this view is too narrow for happiness is highly subjective, there are other conceptions of happiness that are not certainly seen in terms of either means and ends, or satisfaction, or utility or enjoyment. Plato, for example, identifies happiness with transcendence and the beauty of spiritual wellbeing 3⁄4 his happiness is a harmony that lies deep within our souls, a phosphorescent inner peace that irradiates from the careful and measured order of all the parts of our souls. Plotinus thinks that nothing external can prevent a virtuous man from being happy, that man is capable of injuring himself only by himself. Freud also thinks that happiness is derived from a healthy and peaceful being who masters all his perturbations and conflicts within his nature, thus, for Freud, unhappiness is not held as a tragedy but as a neurosis. For the Buddhists, on the other hand, happiness lies in meditation and in annihilating all human desires. For the ancient Greeks, happiness meant self-
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