Happiness: Epicurus Version Of Happiness And Nozick's Happiness

I will argue that Epicurus’s version of happiness is false and Nozick’s Happiness helps show that. Epicurus’s version of happiness is the lack of pain and the meeting the basic needs. Epicurus also believes in having pleasurable things in life. Nozick’s shows how happiness is more than just pleasure or pain. He also shows how happiness is not the only important thing in life.

Epicurus’s version of happiness is the lack of pain. His version of happiness requires friendship, thought, and freedom. Friendship is said to give people a sense of themselves and he believed that without friendship people would not be able to live without being emotionally numb. Friends give the love and support that people want. Thought is said to allow people to think

The idea that people want to have an actual understanding of reality and not just the false understanding of reality by going into a pleasure machine goes to show how happiness is not the only thing that people are striving for. He says that happiness is not the only thing that people care. People care about the events that happen during their life, too. People “want a connection to actuality”(Nozick 107). He believes in there also being three different types of happiness, which are being happy with some particular thing, feeling that life is good, and being satisfied with life (Nozick 108). Epicurus only discusses how meeting needs is essential for the happiness and nothing else. It was said that “Epicurean societies which would provide for essential material needs but could never raise living standards beyond subsistence level” (De Botton 70).

Epicurus’s idea about happiness being just the absences of pain is false. I think happiness involves much more than just a lack of pain. Happiness is more than just a neutral feeling that someone has. Nozick belief of happiness involves a sort of positivity. Nozick talked about how “a happy disposition, in other words-is far more likely to result in continuing feelings of happiness”(114). The happiness that he discusses here is positive and is about feeling good. I believe that happiness does involve positive feelings

I think he sees happiness is one of the most important things in a person’s life. He discusses how to be happy and the things involved. His happiness needs to have friendship, thought, and freedom. I believe Epicurus’s idea that these three things are needed in order to be happy. It is to make sure that the person is not in any sort of physical or mental pain. Having all three aspects of his happiness would keep a person from going into a depressed state and they would help satisfy the basic needs of a person so he or she would live life pain free. On the other hand, Nozick believes that there is more to happiness than what Epicurus’s version is. Nozick said “we also can show that more matters than pleasure or happiness by considering a life that has these but otherwise empty, a life of mindless pleasures or bovine contentment or frivolous amusements only, a happy life but a superficial one” (102). Nozick is talking about how it is better for people to have more to life than just a happy but unaware life. Epicurus’s version of happiness tries to avoid any sort of hardship that might lead to pain, making it more likely for that life to be a frivolous life without meaning. Life involves much more than happiness. Life involves difficulties that help make happiness better in the long