Happy (Part 1), 7-7 -2010

 I spent too much time since 1982 listening to Exile on Main Street. However, this piece has nothing to do with the Rolling Stones.

This piece almost ends my reading of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. He finishes with a discussion of the ultimate goal of ethics: happiness.

Come to think of it, you want to listen to The Rolling Stones' song “Happy” when I finish with Aristotle.

Aristotle writes of two kinds of happiness: the best and the human. We find the best in study:

Such a life would be superior to the human level. For someone will live it not insofar as he is a human being, but insofar as he has some divine element in him. And the activity of this divine element is as much superior to the activity in accord with the rest of virtue as this element is superior to the compound. Hence if understanding is soemthing divine in comparison with a human being, so alos willthe life in accord with understanding is divine... Rather as far as we can, we ought to be pro-immortal, and go to all lenghts to live a life in accord with our supreme element; for however much this element may lack in bulk, by much more it surpasses everything in pwoer and value.

 Nicomachean Ethics, Book X, Chapter 7, §8. I think we can find similar sentiments in all religions. It is how I recollect Nietzsche concludes Thus Spake Zarathustra.

If you deserve wisdom, keep the commandments, and the Lord will betow her upon you; For fear of the Lord is wisdom and cultrue; loyal humilty is his delight.

Sirach, 4, 23–24. Consider The Epistle of James, 3, 13 -18, and 1, 3 -8.

How much different would be our world if money and possessions got replaced with the study of the divine? Never happened and I do not see it ever happening. But ask yourself, why do you not try studying your “Divine element”?

sch 

[Continued in Happy (Part 2), 7–7 -2010. sch 2/11/23.]