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.
I very much agree that happiness does rely on the individual. Relying happiness on others only brings disappointment, which I have learned the hard way. The sad part is that a lot of things that bring people happiness are material things.
ReplyDelete#10
ReplyDeleteI think that the best source of happiness is from doing others good or simply serving the community. It creates memories where you feel proud of helping out. Such memories can be stuck with you, and motivate you to do more good. Relying on materials can introduce a fragile source of happiness. You can easily get bored from things and slowly lose interest. It's hard to lose interest on helping others since it's hard to forget all the "Thank you's" that you receive from others who you helped or served.
"More than likely, the majority of people in the world experience the feeling of happiness every day" - I don't know, there's a lot of misery in the world. I do hope this is true.
ReplyDelete"It is honestly extremely simple to encounter happiness" - well, it's easier to encounter the conditions of what WOULD be happiness if we recognized it as such. I agree, though, happiness is fundamentally a matter of appreciating the small pleasures and delights that simply existing affords us all. "Hygge" is the Dutch word for that, particularly for those pleasures and delights that contrast most sharply with the bleakness of winter.
The Philosophy of Happiness class comes around again in Fall '19, if you're still around.