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What is Aristotle's understanding of happiness
What is Aristotle's understanding of happiness
Aristotle’s Understanding of Happiness
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Aristotle, Temperance, Pleasure, and Pain(1)
ABSTRACT: Aristotle argues that temperance is the mean concerned with pleasure and pain (NE 1107b5-9 and 1117b25-27). Most commentators focus on the moderation of pleasures and hardly discuss how this virtue relates to pain. In what follows, I consider the place of pain in Aristotle’s discussion of temperance and resolve contradictory interpretations by turning to the following question: is temperance ever properly painful? In part one, I examine the textual evidence and conclude that Aristotle would answer no to our question. The temperate person does not feel pain at the absence of appropriately desired objects. In parts two and three, I reconstruct some reasons why Aristotle would hold such a view based. My discussion here is based upon Aristotle’s discussion of continence and the unity of the virtues.
While the accounts of temperance in the Eudemian Ethics and the Nichomachean Ethics share some similarities, the treatment of the topic in the latter is much more developed.(2) As Charles Young argues, Aristotle draws a distinction between common appetites and peculiar appetites. The appetite for food when one hasn’t eaten for several hours is a common, natural appetite. The appetite for a particular food or a particular amount is peculiar. Temperance most properly concerns the peculiar appetites, because, Aristotle says, people don’t tend to go wrong about common appetites since the appetite disappears with replenishment (NE 1118b15-19).(3) A further refinement in the Nicomachean account comes at 1119a16-20. Here Aristotle distinguishes between pleasures conducive to health (called healthful foods by Young) and pleasures that do not interfere with health (called treats by Young). On this more positive account of temperance, one has temperance just in case one’s peculiar appetites for food, sex, and drink are determined by judgments about the contribution to or compatibility with healthfulness.(4) One nice result of this account is that temperance loses any connotations of austerity that it might have had. For a temperate person, on Aristotle’s account, enjoys treats to the extent that they are compatible with health.
This quick summary of the Nicomachean and Eudemian treatments of temperance, while showing some of the subtlety of Aristotle’s position, has selectively omitted a range of issues. The focus has been on pleasure rather than pain. Clearly the intemperate person enjoys consuming foods to an excess. However, it also surely is true that the intemperate person is pained by the absence of those peculiar things he desires.
The first Chinese immigrants to arrive in America came in the early 1800s. Chinese sailors visited New York City in the 1830s (“The Chinese Experience”); others came as servants to Europeans (“Chinese Americans”). However, these immigrants were few in number, and usually didn’t even st...
Slater, A., and Muir, D., (1998). The Blackwell Reader in Developmental Psychology. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, Ltd.
According to Roman philosopher Seneca, “It is easier to exclude harmful passions than to rule them, and to deny them admittance than to control them after they have been admitted.” Seneca uses repetition of the word “admit” to emphasize his belief that humans are in control of what they allow to enter lives. Seneca explains that it is easier to avoid sins than to limit the sins after they have already been committed. Huxley exemplifies this belief through John the Savage who symbolizes the values and culture of the reader’s society. John tried to remain celibate in a society with promiscuous habits. In order to avoid sin, he avoided his source of impure thoughts, Lenina. When the presence of Lenina seemed inevitable, John would punish himself to avoid sin. Overwhelmed by profligacy of wrongdoings, John eventually committed suicide in order to avoid temptation.
Simply defined, happiness is the state of being happy. But, what exactly does it mean to “be happy?” Repeatedly, many philosophers and ideologists have proposed ideas about what happiness means and how one attains happiness. In this paper, I will argue that Aristotle’s conception of happiness is driven more in the eye of ethics than John Stuart Mill. First, looking at Mill’s unprincipled version of happiness, I will criticize the imperfections of his definition in relation to ethics. Next, I plan to identify Aristotle’s core values for happiness. According to Aristotle, happiness comes from virtue, whereas Mill believes happiness comes from pleasure and the absence of pain. Ethics are the moral principles that govern a person’s behavior which are driven by virtues - good traits of character. Thus, Aristotle focuses on three things, which I will outline in order to answer the question, “what does it mean to live a good life?” The first of which is the number one good in life is happiness. Secondly, there is a difference between moral virtues and intellectual virtues and lastly, leading a good life is a state of character. Personally and widely accepted, happiness is believed to be a true defining factor on leading a well intentioned, rational, and satisfactory life. However, it is important to note the ways in which one achieves their happiness, through the people and experiences to reach that state of being. In consequence, Aristotle’s focus on happiness presents a more arguable notion of “good character” and “rational.”
Since the birth of America, many different people from all around the world flocked to North America in hopes of making a good life for themselves, or their families. Many came from the west, as well as a large amount came from the east. Most of these eastern immigrants hailed from China. These people were welcomed with open arms and kindness for a short time, at least at first. Afterwards, there was a long period of racial tension, due to social differences. How did the Chinese immigrants integrate themselves into the American culture, and what difficulties did they face? One thing is sure; the Chinese have stood fast throughout history, and made their place in American society.
Grimm, V. (1996). From Feasting to Fasting, the Evolution of a Sin: Attributes to Food in Late Antinquity. New York.
Seward, George F. "Chinese Immigration." Making Connections: Reading American Cultures, IAH 201. Eds. Dvorak, et. al. Vol. 2. Ann Arbor: Primis, 1997. 760-62. 2 vols.
Salary schedules for public school teachers are almost a common feature in public school districts. These schedules largely determine the salaries for the teachers. A single district schedule sets the pay for hundreds of thousands of teachers in thousands of schools (Besharov 1). The key factor that influences the pay for the teachers in the salary schedules include experience in terms of years and the total number of graduate course works that a teacher has completed. This paper will look at the cons and pros of the salary schedules in terms of an economic point of view.
In his Confessions, Saint Augustine warns against the many pleasures of life. "Day after day," he observes, "without ceasing these temptations put us to the test" (245).[1] He argues that a man can become happy only by resisting worldly pleasures. But according to Aristotle, virtue and happiness depend on achieving the "moral mean" in all facets of life. If we accept Aristotle's ideal of a balanced life, we are forced to view Saint Augustine's denial of temptations from a different perspective. His avoidance of worldly pleasures is an excess of self-restraint that keeps him from the moral mean between pleasure and self-restraint. In this view, he is sacrificing balance for excess, and is no different from a drunkard who cannot moderate his desire for alcohol.
The Breakfast Club demonstrates the interpersonal concepts “I-It” and “I-Thou” as it follows students whose immediate reaction is to treat each other as nothing more than the stereotypical person their titles assume them to be; however, as the film progresses and the characters begin to develop friendships, the characters abandon the stereotypes and begin to look at each other as individuals who have unique personalities and stories.
..." Making Teacher Incentives Work. American Enterprise Institute, 28 June 2011. Web. 7 Apr. 2014.
Aristotle’s thoughts on ethics conclude that all humans must have a purpose in life in order to be happy. I believe that some of the basics of his ideas still hold true today. This essay points out some of those ideas.
Not many people in the world can say that they have had a 100% successful romantic relationship. Looking at the high divorce rate in the United States can prove this. However, there are those couples that have remained together for numerous years. As I am sure that conflict played a big part in ending a large number of relationships, I am also sure that the successful relationships have had their fair share of conflict and have even been helped by that conflict. In this paper, I have constructed nine propositions relating conflict to certain behaviors within romantic relationships. Each one will be defined, summarized, and supported according to the available research.
Happiness can be understood as the moral goal of life or can be unpredictable and is something we create from ourselves and by ourselves. The idea of happiness was known as something we nurture on our own and is a state of emotion. Completing our everyday goals will soon bring us happiness, which seems to be very important to most humans and is what makes life worth living, but this is not certain. This conception of Eudemonia was common in ancient Greece as it is currently today. Aristotle had what he thought was an ideal activity for all those who wanted to live life to the fullest, be happy, and have purpose.
According to Aristotle, the good life is the happy life, as he believes happiness is an end in itself. In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle develops a theory of the good life, also known as eudaimonia, for humans. Eudaimonia is perhaps best translated as flourishing or living well and doing well. Therefore, when Aristotle addresses the good life as the happy life, he does not mean that the good life is simply one of feeling happy or amused. Rather, the good life for a person is the active life of functioning well in those ways that are essential and unique to humans. Aristotle invites the fact that if we have happiness, we do not need any other things making it an intrinsic value. In contrast, things such as money or power are extrinsic valuables as they are all means to an end. Usually, opinions vary as to the nature and conditions of happiness. Aristotle argues that although ‘pleasurable amusements’ satisfy his formal criteria for the good, since they are chosen for their own sake and are complete in themselves, nonetheless, they do not make up the good life since, “it would be absurd if our end were amusement, and we laboured and suffered all our lives for the sake of amusing ourselves.”