Philosophy 120w
Philosophy 120W
Looking at the world as a big picture and everyone who is in it, they all seem to strive for the same thing in life, happiness. Happiness or Eudemonia as Aristotle calls it, is created through the process of combining five different components. These are the following components: Human function, the rational part of the soul, habituation, character, and virtue. Since our society craves happiness and views it as the best achievement we could have, Aristotle described it as the ultimate end. It is obvious that everyone desperately wants to achieve happiness. In the opening sections of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says the following “…rational agents (us) choose and deliberate with a view to their ultimate good, which is happiness; it is the ultimate end, since we want it for its own sake…” To achieve this ultimate end as Aristotle says, our happiness needs to be complete. To reach that goal, the five components need to be combined. The first component being Human function. Human function is necessary for our well-being. Defined as an activity of the soul based on thinking and reasoning human function is also known as being the best good when it comes to happiness, because it is complete (7). Aristotle compared how our happiness is so essential to our lives the same way it is necessary for a plant to live a purely nutritive life and an animal needs to live a life based on sense perception and desire (intro.) Every one of us has a function, but it is different from person to person because it is solely based on reasoning. The following example comes from page 9 in the text: “The function of a harpist is the same as the function of an excellent harpist.” Both harpists want to play the harp, well, but how they accomplish this goal comes from their personal thinking and reasoning. We live based on all decisions personally made coming from this practical reasoning, when these decisions are completed, happiness will come to us. Reading on,
Looking at the world as a big picture and everyone who is in it, they all seem to strive for the same thing in life, happiness. Happiness or Eudemonia as Aristotle calls it, is created through the process of combining five different components. These are the following components: Human function, the rational part of the soul, habituation, character, and virtue. Since our society craves happiness and views it as the best achievement we could have, Aristotle described it as the ultimate end. It is obvious that everyone desperately wants to achieve happiness. In the opening sections of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says the following “…rational agents (us) choose and deliberate with a view to their ultimate good, which is happiness; it is the ultimate end, since we want it for its own sake…” To achieve this ultimate end as Aristotle says, our happiness needs to be complete. To reach that goal, the five components need to be combined. The first component being Human function. Human function is necessary for our well-being. Defined as an activity of the soul based on thinking and reasoning human function is also known as being the best good when it comes to happiness, because it is complete (7). Aristotle compared how our happiness is so essential to our lives the same way it is necessary for a plant to live a purely nutritive life and an animal needs to live a life based on sense perception and desire (intro.) Every one of us has a function, but it is different from person to person because it is solely based on reasoning. The following example comes from page 9 in the text: “The function of a harpist is the same as the function of an excellent harpist.” Both harpists want to play the harp, well, but how they accomplish this goal comes from their personal thinking and reasoning. We live based on all decisions personally made coming from this practical reasoning, when these decisions are completed, happiness will come to us. Reading on,