The concept of happiness come from many places, starting in ancient times. A English philosopher named John Locke “coining the phrase pursuit of happiness in his book in Essay Concerning Human Understanding”. But he was influenced by Greek philosophers, the Aristotle. Later the famous quote everyone know from the Declaration of Independence, “the inalienable right to life liberty and the pursuit…
Multiple viewpoints concerning happiness exist, such as how one can attain happiness, and the different types of happiness. Two different perspectives on happiness are proposed in the articles by Arthur Brooks and Adam Green. Happiness 101, by Adam Green analyzes Thomas Aquinas writings on the attainment of happiness and the types of happiness. Love People, Not Pleasure, by Arthur Brooks focuses on how individuals attempt to achieve happiness by accumulating material wealth and objects. However, it is Brooks’s opinion that material objects cannot allow one to achieve happiness, but loving people is how happiness is attained.…
Life-satisfaction line of research began in the Enlightenment period and adapts the 18th century Enlightenment kind of thinking. According to Veenhoven (1996), the Enlightenment perspective considers life itself as the purpose of existence while “society itself is seen as a means for providing citizens with the necessities for a good life”. This could also be in line with John Mill’s utilitarian moral theory that assumed that it is the consequences of human actions that count in evaluating their merit and that the kind of consequences matters for human happiness is just the achievement of pleasure and the avoidance of pain.…
‘Aristotelianism is defined as happiness as the quality of a whole life time.’ “Happiness is the purpose for which we live. Aristotle concluded that happiness is not a moment to moment experience of pleasurable things but rather a way of characterizing how one’s life is being conducted. Happiness is living and having lived a good life”. (Janaro & Altshuler, 2009)…
In Augustine’s article “Virtue and the Human Soul,” happiness is discussed in great detail. What makes a man happy? How do we obtain this happiness and where does…
Most of the Greek moralists think that, if we are rational, we aim at living well or happiness. Living well or happiness is our ultimate end in that a conception of happiness serves to organize our various subordinate ends, by indicating the relative importance of our ends and by indicating how they should fit together into some rational overall scheme. Aristotle says that happiness is “perfect” or “complete” and something distinctively human. When we are living well, our life is worthy of imitation and admiration. For, according to the Greek moralists, that we are happy says something about us and about what we have achieved, not simply about the fortunate circumstances in which we find ourselves. So they argue that happiness cannot consist simply in “external goods” or “goods of fortune,” for these goods are external to our own choosing and deciding. Whatever happiness is, it must take account of the fact that a happy life is one lived by rational agents who act and who are not simply victims of their circumstances.…
Many people try to define and consider different definitions of what happiness is, and I think that Plato and Aristotle offer interesting views of happiness and what it means for one to live a good life. Both philosophers agree that happiness is an important factor in one’s life and essentially the essence of how to live a good life. Plato offers many theories and definitions of justice leading to happiness, while Aristotle argues that happiness is the main goal that all humans aim for in their entire life. Plato offers a philosophical view of a happy life for an individual by explaining a just state and what it would entail and also the theory of the forms that one must understand to achieve happiness. After learning about both philosophers, I have come to the conclusion that I agree with Aristotle’s view of happiness more because he gives us a broad outline of what a good life is. Although Plato was Aristotle’s mentor, Aristotle offers a view of happiness that is more plausible and relevant than Plato’s because it places a large emphasis on the idea of the function of a human being. Therefore, in this paper, I will argue that I agree with Aristotle’s view of happiness over Plato’s because of the way Aristotle describes how humans can achieve the greatest good in life: happiness.…
People have defined happiness as some kind of good of a human being. In Nicomachean Ethics: Book I, Aristotle defines happiness as the activity of living well, which in the Greek word is called eudaimonia. He tends to think that happiness is how we balance and moderate our lives to seek the highest pleasures, which he calls maintaining the mean. In the following excerpt from Book I, Aristotle talks about how happiness presumably consists in attaining some good or set of goods. “Now goods have been divided into three classes, and some are described as external, others as relating to soul or to body; we call those that relate to soul most properly and truly goods, and psychical actions and activities we class as relating to soul” (Book I pg. 7). He is saying that since happiness consists in attaining some good that there are three different types of goods that you can attain; an external goods, which consists of wealth or honor, goods of the body, which is health or physical strength, and lastly goods of the soul, which consists of knowledge, education, and friendship. Aristotle goes on to say how only certain goods are necessary for happiness. “It is correct also in that we identify the end with certain actions and activities; for thus it falls among goods of the soul and not among external goods. Another belief which harmonizes with our account is that the happy man lives well and does well; for we have practically defined happiness as a sort of good life and good action” (Book I pg. 7). He is saying that only certain goods such as health are the necessary preconditions for happiness and that other goods such as wealth is just something extra that help fill out a good life for a virtuous person, but the possession of virtue or excellence is the element of happiness. Aristotle also adds that humans seek different goods that make them happy compared to animals because humans have a rational capacity that when exercised perfects our natures as human beings.…
On the other hand happiness has been described by Kant to mean a constant well-being, enjoyment of life, total fulfillment with one's condition. The happiness is further extended to include the riches, honor, power, good health coupled with satisfaction. Thus it is notes that happiness is a representation of preservation and welfare which is the total satisfaction of all personal needs and preferences. It is important to realize that happiness is not pleasure but rather it is simply obtaining what you want in life.…
The Greeks had many ideas that contributed to the big concept of happiness. One of the many ideas that I learn from Greek philosophies is the idea of Agnostic, From a Greek meaning “unknown” or “unknowable”. This is commonly used to describe a person who does not patiently disbelieve in god but who asserts that nothing about god, including his existence, can be known for a certain. Another concept that compromises the idea of happiness is morality, in other words, depending on your beliefs distinguishing right from wrong. I will be comparing and contrasting how some of the ideas that I learned in my humanities class intertwine each other with the idea of happiness.…
In Books 9-11 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle works to segregate the explanations of happiness as a result of fortune and happiness as a result of virtuous actions. However, after he reaches an ideologically pure explanation, he quickly pivots backwards, settling on an explanation that incorporates elements of both theories. This allows posthumous events to affect one’s state of happiness, impacts his definition of happiness, and exemplifies the text’s ideological inclusion.…
In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the dialogue focuses mostly on how to live the good life, and what happiness is as well as what is commonly perceived as happiness. Book 1.4 introduces the question, what is the human good? Aristotle goes to say that most people have a different conception to what happiness is to what a wise man would have of it. In book 1.5, Aristotle gives what he says to be the popular conceptions of happiness which are, pleasure, honor, and wealth, and he also puts up arguments against these accounts. I am going to reconstruct each of these conceptions, breakdown Aristotle’s arguments against them, and give my reasoned and critical assessment of his arguments.…
As generally defined in today’s society, happiness would be described as an emotion that brings about feelings of pleasure and joy. However, Ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, had a different take on happiness and how one achieves it. Aristotle believed happiness is an “activity of the soul in accordance with virtue and excellence” and goes further in his teachings with how he describes this happiness. Therefore, happiness is a difficult concept to explain because how Aristotle defined happiness may differ from how one may define happiness in current society.…
In the quest of happiness, we often find difficulties. Some case made us decide how to react towards a certain condition for happiness. As people born with feeling, and we often feel something must benefit for us. This feeling ensue the need of something which depend of its amount. When it’s high, it will need much longer to satisfy the needs and when it reaches its peak, it will stop automatically. Satisfied needs bring us comfort and happy. In this essay, we will describe how coverage individual needs bring happiness as portrayed in Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “A Happy Man”.…
Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good. That good is happiness, which means living well. Health, wealth, and luck are necessary for happiness. All human action has an end, a purpose. There are two types of ends; 1) end for something else 2) end in itself, common. For example, we go grocery shopping to buy food, but buying food in itself is a means toward the end of eating well. There are various views on what happiness is, and it differs from person to person (Ethics I. 4). There are three popular views on what the good is (Ethics I. 5) Life of pleasure, end/good is pleasure, Life of Politics, end/good is honor, and Life of contemplation, end/good is knowledge. However, good must be something final and self-sufficient (Ethics I. 7) the final end equal good that is happiness.…