In this essay I am going to compare the similarities and differences between the Terry Eagleton book and the David Wallace’s commencement address. This articles both different and aimed at a different audience, offers an interesting similarity in some aspects and differences in other to one another. The main ideas that we will be looking at are how love and happiness conflict with one another; and how we need to learn what to worship through the meaning of experiences. Then I will relate these concepts to my personal thoughts of how these concepts can be interpreted. Since the Terry Eagleton was the first book we started with it would be only fair to begin this paper with it. This book has the main idea of discovering what the meaning of …show more content…
In order to get a better understanding of both these words and how they conflict in Eagleton’s view we need to first examine each word. Eagleton first states that everyone wants happiness and that it is unique to each individual because, “we all share different happiness’s” (Eagleton). He defines happiness as well being, a status of soul attained by social practices of virtues, rather than a state of mind or feeling; and that happiness is one of human’s inherent faculties, which refer to capacities, abilities and powers. Eagleton realizes that most people believe that happiness is obtained through things like, money, success, power, fame, and beauty. However, Eagleton goes on to mention that by having these materialistic objects as the things that …show more content…
Eagleton states, “Love resembles happiness in that it seems to be a baseline term, an end in itself. Like happiness, it seems to be of our nature” (Eagleton). He is pretty much saying that he recognizes that they are similar to one another but that love and happiness and unique to each other. However, Eagleton believes that since we get happiness through love the reverse should also be the same with love giving us happiness; however, we know that this statement can be false pending how to look at it and in what way you look at it. This starts Eagleton’s discussion on how love and happiness conflict. He begins with the example of, “someone who spends their life caring for a severely disabled child sacrifices their happiness to their love, even if this sacrifice is also made in the name of happiness for the child. But this idea of a conflict is quickly put down when he begins his idea on page 98. This is the idea that if you love something you have to sacrifice your happiness, vice versa of this idea is that if your happy then you probably lacking love. Eagleton starts to debate this concept by saying that, “love and happiness are not ultimately at odds. If happiness is seen in Aristotelian terms as the free flourishing of our faculties, and if love is the kind
and its many meanings we must analyze it. As a result, the best and most
People who are successful purchase big houses, go on expensive vacations and live a life of luxury only to realize that they are not happier than the time they had nothing. He gave another example of an unhappy person who is naked, hungry and outdoor in the cold. He is given food, clothing and taken inside and instantly he becomes happy. These examples complement Emerson’s quote “The world is his who can see through its pretensions” because once a person is able to see that the things society values do not bring them true happiness they will be open to sharing with others. True happiness is achieved with the fulfilment of basic needs and wants, and not with the hoarding of
... of the Christian faith front and center by uniting two camps of believers in one reading; a starting point. As illustrated by the authors, “Though we have not, of course, reached agreement, we are satisfied that we have eliminated misunderstandings, that is, that neither of us has misrepresented the other. We offer the result to the reader as a celebration of shared friendship, faith, and scholarship” (xi).
People are entitled to happiness and have the ability to pursue it. Many people don’t get to achieve true happiness because they are blinded by the thought that true happiness comes from materialistic wants. The American dream is bended and deformed by society's point of view. Everyone has a different point of view. For some the American dream consists of living a lavishing life filled with money, materials, and power. Other they view the American dream as being able to have inner peace, love, and friendship. In the Novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, each protagonist desired to achieve true happiness. For example in the eyes were watching god Janie only desired love and knowing that she is valued as a person, and not look at as something lower than a mule. As for Gatsby in The Great Gatsby where he craved the love from daisy. Both craved the similar loves yet, both came from two different sides, where Gatsby was rolling in dough and doing dirty work to gain money, as for Janie she worked hard to get closer to her dream.
Sappho, who is very well the speaker and author of the poem, clearly recognizes the substantial impact that love creates in relation to the amount of happiness people experience. Those who are successful in the game love, whether it be by giving it or receiving it, are far happier than those who confront despair and rejection. Finding love means finding the acceptance, companionship, and most of all, happiness that everyone strives to receive in their lifetime. As a result, love becomes a weapon for power, superiority, and control.
What is happiness? It’s a very vague question. Different people have a different satisfaction and needs. What each and every one of us wants are so different from one another that you can’t really categorize what exactly a happiness is for a person. In the modern society, American Dream is the pinnacle that everyone is racing to reach too. It’s what they believe as the ultimate goal and only a selected few are able to achieve it. It’s what people assume as a path to achieve happiness. Although, this might not actually be the case, but people failed to recognize this as materialistic value has been such a dominant factor in a person life. A strong sense of individualism is also very dominating in the western culture, which largely contribute to the factor of what makes American Dream. Does happiness really lies on the other side of the very decorated “American Dream”? Does being rich and famous really bring you happiness?
Classical philosophers and rhetoricians theorized whether eudemonia was a matter of luck (up to the daimons) or whether humans in fact had agency. They also defined happiness in relation to an ethical framework, often requiring virtue as a prerequisite. My exam area reads into these many incarnations of happiness as an idea(l) that Richard Weaver calls a “God-term” in its “inherent potency,” woven deep into the fabric of our constitution with ‘obvious’ discursive patterns and powerful institutionalized effects. Materialized through discourse, happiness is necessarily relational and socially persuasive, imbued with ethical assumptions, and embodied in knowledge and beliefs. At times this awareness is either lost or left implicit, but by bringing this critical perspective to the historical trajectory, I situate distinct rhetorics of happiness.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig; G. E. M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte (eds. and trans.). Philosophical Investigations. 4th edition, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print.
In Civilization and Its Discontents (Ch. 2), Sigmund Freud argues that happiness is routed in two basic ideas: the first having to do with no pain and the other having to do with pleasure. Along with his idea of what the root of happiness is, he also describes multiple ways this happiness can be attained. Freud states that love and beauty are both means of achieving happiness. Although love and beauty cannot completely prevent all worldly suffering, they both offer a powerful explanation that can help an individual determine the true meaning of their life. In this presentation, we will argue that this argument succeeds because true happiness is difficult to come by in this life, but things such as love and beauty provide a basis for passionate strife in an individual, while also causing an intoxicating kind of sensation that may lead to a definite meaning to Earthly existence for a human being.
Some may say love is just an emotion while others may say it is a living and breathing creature. Songs and poems have been written about love for hundreds and thousands of years. Love has been around since the beginning of time, whether someone believes in the Big Bang or Adam and Eve. Without love, there wouldn’t be a world like it is known today. But with love, comes pain with it. Both William Shakespeare and Max Martin know and knew this. Both ingenious poets wrote love songs of pain and suffering as well as blossoming, newfound love. The eccentric ideal is both writers were born centuries apart. How could both know that love and pain work hand in hand when they were born 407 years apart? Love must never change then. Love survives and stays its original self through the hundreds and thousands of years it has been thriving. Though centuries apart, William Shakespeare and Max Martin share the same view on love whether i...
aim and end of human existence. We create our own happiness. Happiness is not something really made,
Happiness is a term that typically has different definitions. Some define happiness, as the things one possess; others may define it as doing a good deed and the feeling one has after doing a good deed. Merriam-Webster defines happiness as, “a state of well-being and contentment” . Even Aristotle acknowledges that everyone disagrees on the definition of happiness because we all have a different thought-process and prior knowledge. Even though there are many definitions to happiness, both Aristotle and John Stuart Mill take a similar approach when attempting to define happiness in their books. Aristotle and Mill discuss their theories of happiness and pleasure, and their views of virtue in ethics and its relation to happiness. Aristotle and Mill may have been writing at different times, and did not necessarily have the same beliefs, but both philosophers took a similar position when defining happiness.
But in this debate, one question still raises its head - What is happiness? Happiness is not actually leading a luxurious life, but the luxury of living a life. Happiness is not actually about expanding your business, but it lies in expanding the horizons of life. Happiness is not having a meal in the most famous restaurant, but having it with your most beloved family. It does not lie in attending honorable parties, but to attend a party with honor.
On the contrary, a main reason why we struggle to find happiness is the fact that we are often blinded from its true definition, and convinced to seek it in places where it can’t be found. In today’s society, false pictures of what this concept really means have been painted in our minds by outside sources. One of the major causes of these fabricated characterizations is blamed on the media. When we watch the television and see someone who is well known walking around in a suit with a supermodel next to his side, we jump to the conclusion that he is a happy person. But, that isn’t always the case. Fame and fortune do not automatically guarantee happiness. It is such an intangible subject that it makes it hard for someone to fully grasp its true concept.
What exactly is happiness anyway? Happiness is when you feel complete and satisfied. It is when you’re content with where you are and what you have. It is the joy of doing something you love, or spending time with someone you love. It is an emotion and the best one yet. Money can easily make a person temporarily happy with the possessions it can buy, but true happiness is more than that. People can have everything material wise and still not be happy. Sure it can buy you many things, but the happiness from it is only temporary and limited. There’s only so much happiness you can buy with money. Money can easily buy you food, a clock, a house, education, make-up or medication; however it can’t buy you nutrition, time, a home, knowledge, beauty or health. It can buy you infatuation, but not love, acquaintances but not friendship and hierarchy but not respect. People spend their entire lives trying to make more and more money thinking that it means success. They neglect family and friends, don’t care about who they take down to reach their ...