“Aristotle: What?

To achieve felicity or what is considered a true state of happiness, one

must strive to maximize ones time spent in leisure. This is my interpretation

of Aristotle’s expressions of leisure. Unlike what we have come to

understand is recreation and leisure today, Aristotle believed that leisure

should be spent practicing. I use practice in the general form as according to

Aristotle the capacity and ability to obtain, maintain and exude rational

thought is the greatest ability and ultimate achievement of the human state.

This implies that to be the best you possible, one should occupy all

remaining time of one’s day with expanding the mind with knowledge.

Whether the knowledge gathered was of dirt or the sky, rationality was the

ultimate goal. This would serve to give people a sense of purpose at all

times. As one of means and in an era whereas the job of being a philosopher

was considered to be a job in and of itself for those of significantly greater

intelligence, means and of the masculine gender the pursuit of leisure in this

view would be seen as a way to further the intelligence of the common man

which was not “common” economically.

This view while accepted in his day is totally obsolete for the new

world of the 21st century. It is the belief of today’s society at large,

however; that this is incorrect. As happiness is a part of Aristotle’s

teachings, we as a majority believe felicity is achieved by living a “full” live

of love and being able to achieve what I like to call contentness. Once love

or contentness of family, friends and life as a whole (work, school ,

commutes, etc.) is obtained one is considered not to have anything to

complain about and therefore “happy”.