The Philosophy of Happiness

Danielle Casteel (10)

Philosophy 1030

Dr. Oliver

Installment #1

Philosophy of Happiness

Happiness is defined as “the state of being happy.” Everyone experiences happiness in their life rather it being very few times, to experiencing it every single day. More than likely, the majority of people in the world experience the feeling of happiness every day. It is honestly extremely simple to encounter happiness. For some, it is just thinking of someone or something that makes you smile. For others, it is seeing other people happy that makes them happy.

Understanding that, the philosophy of happiness is defined as “the philosophical concern with the existence, nature, and attainment of happiness.” In other words, happiness comes from reaching a certain moral goal in life. To many philosophers, this is completely true. For example, the famous philosopher Aristotle thinks of happiness as being a specific purpose in life and that specific purpose being that one goal. However, Aristotle also stated that “happiness depends on ourselves.” In my opinion, I agree with him on that statement only because we cannot rely on others to form our own happiness. With that being said, I understand important people in someone’s life can be a huge factor on their happiness, but that one person could cause them sadness as well. We all know and accept that others can make us happy, but the question is: What if there was no one else? Imagine being the only person on the planet. Thinking outside of the box, you would literally have no one to give you happiness. Going back to Aristotle’s argument, you would have to depend on yourself to be happy. Knowing that my example is unrealistic, I still agree that we cannot always rely on others for happiness. I am not saying that we cannot not rely on them, because sometimes we all need a friend to be there through difficult times.

Plato also has a certain outlook on happiness. His definition states, “we must be moral in order to be truly happy which rests on a discussion of the four cardinal virtues: wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice.” With Plato being Aristotle’s mentor, he was obviously influenced by Aristotle in the way of depending on ourselves. What Plato is saying is that if a person can encounter some sort of either wisdom, courage, moderation, and/or justice, then they can encounter happiness. Thinking about that, we all experience either one or all four of those virtues at some point in our lives. Whether it being once, many times or even all at the same time.

            For example, we all have some sort of wisdom, even small children. Wisdom is something you can be born with in my opinion, but mainly is something you gain. Daniel Gottlieb even has a book titled, The Wisdom We’re Born With. In this book, it offers the wise counsel on the relationship between what we want and what we have. In other words, what you have should determine your happiness, rather than what you want. I agree with Gottlieb in this matter simply because of the fact that the “wants” in life are not something you need. The “needs” in life are the things that keep you alive, and being alive from day to day should enforce happiness if your life.

In my next installment, I will be talking about Socrates and his point of view on happiness.