Personal views regarding Aristotle's Philosophy

         

  According to Aristotle ‘Man's intellectual capacity is his highest capacity, and therefore his highest happiness resides in the use of that capacity. The life of contemplation is so sublime that it is practically divine, and man can achieve it only insofar as there is something divine in him. Contemplation is the action which best fulfils all the qualifications that the ultimate good should have, because it is the most continuous, complete and self-sufficient of all actions.’ So when we talk about the reality of life – the striving, struggle and persistence to live worthy and or comfortably with prosperity, these would just all be vanity of all vanities for these are all peripheries of what is beyond our expectations accordingly, as the adage goes ‘All things have time, and all things under the sun pass by their spaces.’

       Thereupon, living intellectually is the very essence of a happy and worthy life. And intellectual life proceeds with what is good. Things of any variety have a characteristic function that they are properly used to perform. The good for human beings, then, must essentially involve the entire proper function of human life as a whole, and this must be an activity of the soul that expresses genuine virtue or excellence. (Nic. Ethics I 7) Thus, human beings should aim at a life in full conformity with their rational natures; for this, the satisfaction of desires and the acquisition of material goods are less important than the achievement of virtue. A happy person will exhibit a personality appropriately balanced between reasons and desires, with moderation characterizing all. In this sense, at least, "virtue is its own reward." True happiness can therefore be attained only through the cultivation of the virtues that make a human life complete.