Happiness is always an important issue in ethics. Differing from that in the ancient time, contemporary discussion about happiness takes rights as the premise and key to obtain happiness in life. When Rawls and other philosophers explain rights with “primary goods”, they effectively point out the fundamental material conditions for happiness in social life. Amartya Sen regards capability as a key concept for rights, stressing that happiness is not only about the meeting of external conditions, but it is all about the application and display of personal capability. Sen’s concept of capability comes from Aristotle’s theory of function. In Aristotle, function and virtue are closely linked in the sense that the function of human beings demonstrates in a teleological way the excellence, and consequently the value of human beings. Sen’s discussion of happiness from rights to capability and then to virtue shows that we can go beyond the abstract context of modern normative ethics and understand rights in the context of human value and the meaning of life on the one hand, and we can also re-examine and re-define happiness from the perspective of virtue.