Character & Happiness
I was enjoying The Life of Henry Brulard, by Stendhal, the other evening, and I came across a passage that seemed to me to be a curious synthesis of Aristotle's & Kant's notions of happiness (mentioned in the footnote of the Nicomachean post). In an aside, Stendhal remarks, "I call a man's character his habitual way of going in pursuit of happiness," (italics mean the English word rather than French was used in the original). They both hint at this, but Stendhal distills the concepts into something that can have meaning.
Comments
a happiness seeking repetition that defines us by our actions to take it.
I wonder if it Stendhal is referring to pleasure seeking, contentment, illusion of happiness, dilusion, physiological chemical balance and the entire slew of "Happy" states.
Perhaps those who do not typically seek any sort of Happiness increasing state have very little character because of the sedentary effects one can manage to put themselves into when they do not practice their "will". (OSLT )