Happiness when Yahya bin Oday

Document Type : Original Article

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Abstract

This study aims to explain Yahya ibn Adi's definition of Happiness, and their relationship to knowledge, to the good action, to the good and evil and to freedom of the will. 
Hi discusses the possibility of attaining happiness through virtuous actions which depend on understanding and reasoning. The concept of happiness, the concept of virtue, the role of the rational soul in attaining happiness and how human actions related to his reason and will.
In his moral philosophy, Yahya ibn Adi considers human being free, i.e he can do and not to do. For this very reason Yahya ibn Adi presents an educational vision which enable human beings to achieve their ultimate happiness.
Yahya ibn Adi asks man to occupy himself with studying sciences and looking into books of ethics and politics, to keep his soul alert, which leads the soul to know what is good and what is evil actions, when this end achieved the soul became interested in doing good actions.
Yahya ibn Adi discussed the human action and its conditions, he considered man a free subject who has volition and the power to do or not to do.

Yahya ibn Adi believed that man can achieve the ultimate stage of his perfection, that is the state of the perfect man. This stage depends on providing the soul with the best knowledge and a discipline of purification of the soul. When this stage reached, there will be a law of the soul which makes the perfect man act always autonomously without thinking or reasoning.