Summary and Analysis
Book X:
Chapter VI - Happiness
Summary
Happiness or well-being is a self-sufficient activity desirable for its own sake. One seeks nothing from happiness beyond the actual experience or performance of it as an activity. As already stated, activities that are desirable in themselves are activities in conformity with virtue and indicates that the greatest happiness must be activity in conformity with the highest virtue. It is wrong to confuse happiness with various kinds of amusements involving bodily pleasures, as many people do. Such amusements are neither virtuous nor ends in themselves, but are merely relaxing diversions in which one occasionally engages for the sake of future activity.