Felicity from the View of Peripatetic Philosophy, philosophy of Illumination and Transcendent Philosophy

Felicity is one of the main concerns of every man and is regarded one of the important issues in religion, ethics, philosophy of ethics and philosophical anthropology, and it has been the subject of speculation and inquiry to Muslim philosophers and religious scholars. The present paper seeks to study the nature of felicity from the view of peripatetic philosophy, philosophy of illumination and transcendent philosophy. Felicity, to these schools, means attaining the kinds of pleasure that correspond to man’s perfection. However, since man’s soul has several faculties and for each of them certain pleasures represent perfection, felicity is multiple and has different levels including sensual pleasure, imaginary pleasure and intellectual pleasure. The highest degree of felicity is the very intellectual pleasure which is realized by intellective soul, and the real felicity is the one which is attained by perceiving the intelligible and attachment to the abstract in theory and by controlling the body in practice. The final point is that peripatetic philosophy, philosophy of illumination and transcendent philosophy all agree about what the nature of felicity is. An analytical-descriptive method is used in this study.