'happiness', 'blessedness', and in the context of virtue ethics, 'human flourishing'. in this sense is not a subjective, but an objective, state. It characterizes the well-lived life.

According to Aristotle, the most prominent exponent of in the Western philosophical tradition, defines the goal of human life. It consists of exercising the characteristic human quality--reason--as the soul's most proper and nourishing activity. In his Nicomachean Ethics,