The different concepts of happiness

The forms of happiness The concept of happiness according to classical authors:

The happiness in relation with the activity of the soul:

Aristotle begins his work with his book "About the soul", in which he explains that "the soul is the cause and the principle of the living body" Cap 4 A3, also that the soul is the perfection of the body and the first mobile motor. From then all his books are developed from this study of the soul.

In Nicomachean Ethics Book I he wrote: "we call perfect what is always chosen by itself and never for anything else, it seems to be, above all, happiness, because we chose it for itself", "the happiness is a certain activity of the soul according to the virtue", Book I c 9; "happiness is the most perfect good", "happiness is the reward of virtue", then in Rhetoric he would affirm: "happiness is the wellness accompanied by virtue, or the possession of sufficient means to live, or the very pleasant life together with the security of continuing in it, or the good state of the riches and the bodies ", Book I cap V.

The happiness in relation with the spirit:

Thomas Aquinas, father of the scholastic school, begins with his studies with God, not from the soul and affirms in the Summa Theologiae: "God is the happiness of man", "eternal happiness consists in the vision of God", "the happiness is what everyone wants unanimously". The scholastic philosophy puts happiness in relation with God and fundamentally in the contemplation of God.

In the Bible the ecclesiastes teaches us: "Happiness is for those who fear God", Ecclesiastes 8:12. The Bible, and in particular the old testament, place happiness in the hands of those people who are devout and predisposed to acquire wisdom by constancy; let´s remember that the fear of God as a spiritual gift is devotion, firmness, constancy, equanimity, stability.

In the New Testament, in the Gospels, in Luke 6: 20-23 and in Matthew 5: 3-12, Christ in the Sermon of the Mount talks about the Beatitudes and puts happiness in the hope of the blessed life and the fulfillment of the kingdom of God, all the beatitudes begin with the word "happy".

The concepts of happiness are many and vary according to the classical authors. Each reader chooses with which concept of happiness stays.