Learn English – What does “the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope” mean

meaning-in-context

Can anybody help me paraphrase Kennedy's sentence please? I don't understand it.

The problem with both such views, for Aristotle, is that they neglect the importance of fulfilling one’s potential. He cites approvingly the primordial Greek maxim that nobody can be called happy until he is dead: nobody wants to end up believing on his deathbed that he didn’t fulfil his potential. In her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying (2011), the palliative nurse Bronnie Ware describes exactly the hazards that Aristotle advises us to avoid. Dying people say: ‘I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.’ John F Kennedy summed up Aristotelian happiness thus: ‘the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope’.

Source: https://aeon.co/essays/what-can-aristotle-teach-us-about-the-routes-to-happiness

Best Answer

Happiness is the exercise of vital powers, along lines of excellence, in a life affording them scope.

This is a precisely-worded and carefully chosen sentence! So it is impossible to put its precise meaning into other words. Bu this is somewhat close:

"Happiness" is the condition whereby a person can and does perform the most important functions of their life, is very successful in doing so in an objectively "good" way, and is fortunate enough to not be prevented from doing so by the circumstances of their life.

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