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Happiness and Pleasure
The way we live our lives has been questioned by many scholars. Jeremy Bentham and Aristotle questioned pleasure and happiness. They both came up with similar and different conclusions. Jeremy Bentham had a utilitarian approach approach that stated that happiness is pleasure with absence of pain. Aristotle believed that happiness can be achieved by living in accordance to reason. My views on happiness and pleasure are similar to the two philosophers, I believe that happiness is the highest of all goals in a human life and can be achieved at the end of a lifetime, while the rest are only momentarily pleasures that build up to the bigger picture.
According to Jeremy Bentham, morality is based on pain and pleasure.
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It is ultimately the highest end goal in my life. People are born, they rise and live but ultimately grow old and wither away into nothingness. We all have a limited time in the life we have, for we don't know if there ever will be an afterlife. In this limited life we have, the way we live it matters the most because we only have one chance. Happiness comes into play, everything I do is for achieving happiness. Pleasure on the other hand, is the activities that lead to happiness. Enjoying the the view of a magnificent landscape, spending an evening with close friends, kissing your significant other, the scent of a fresh summer day, are all pleasurable activities that in the end lead to happiness. However, pleasure is dependent on circumstances, it is inconsistent and comes and goes. It is motivated externally and is a fleeting moment, while happiness is generated internally and is constant. Happiness is the end result of all pleasures. The more we do something we find pleasurable the happier we will end up being. Therefore, there exists an cause and effect relationship between pleasure and happiness. Happiness is the effect that is derived from a cause that is pleasure. Happiness for me is only derived from non materialistic pleasures. Materialistic objects like, cars, phones, clothes etc, only give pleasure that provide temporary satisfaction. People then fall in love with objects and without them are not able to find any …show more content…
Aristotle had his own views and so did Jeremy Bentham. Aristotle had a view of a supreme good, which was happiness. It was the end goal of everyones life and was only achievable at the end and never temporarily. Bentham believed in his theory of utility that stated that actions or behaviours are right if they promote happiness or pleasure, and are wrong if they produce unhappiness or pain, all in accordance to the community. Happiness can be achieved anytime through having action be more pleasurable than it causes pain. For some people pleasure and happiness exist simultaneously for others pleasure leads up to the happiness. Happiness and pleasure is therefore dependent on the views of
According to Google, the word pleasure is defined as “a feeling of happy satisfaction and enjoyment,” while the word joy is defined as “a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.” However, a dictionary definition is not merely as complex, subjective, and versatile as human emotions and experiences – though, it does provide a basic generalization of how most people perceive and process different feelings, emotions, and moods. Author, Zadie Smith, respectively, analyzes and differentiates between pleasure and joy and distinctively separates the two with regards to their quality and quantity. As she explains, pleasure most closely refers to a temporary state of satisfaction and contentment, it can be easily forgotten, and is often times preferred
Aristotle accepts that there is an agreement that this chief good is happiness, but that there is a disagreement with the definition of happiness. Due to this argument, men divide the good into the three prominent types of life: pleasure, political and contemplative. Most men are transfixed by pleasure; a life suitable for “beasts”. The elitist life (politics) distinguishes happiness as honour, yet this is absurd given that honour is awarded from the outside, and one’s happiness comes from one’s self. The attractive life of money-making is quickly ruled out by Aristotle since wealth is not the good man seeks, since it is only useful for the happiness of something else.
Every person in the world wants to be happy and what makes us happy? Well that would be pleasure. Pleasure is a feeling of happiness and satisfaction physically through our body and mentality in our mind. Everyone in the world will do anything for pleasure no matter what it is. But should every pleasure we seek be desired because not everything is free, but comes with a price? Is pleasure going to be our most important goal in life? Well to answer those questions, you should read Letter to Herodotus by Epicurus, who is a philosopher, and maybe he could answer that question. Epicurus will tell us how to live a full and successful life. Epicurus made Epicureanism where we will learn the important of pleasure and the decision that we made that will lead to happiness or the destruction of
Happiness is perhaps the only clear ultimate end. Happiness is what we strive for by itself and not to get anything else. "So it appears that happiness is the ultimate end and completely sufficient by itself. It is the end we seek in all we do.';(Aristotle, 461) Mans' good is related to his purpose; the purpose of a man involves the actions of his soul (the soul being a part of his reasoning). By carrying out the activities of his soul and doing so with proper excellence and virtue, man is able to reach a desirable end.
When Bentham writes that, “By utility is meant that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness, (all this in or to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappi- ness to the party whose interest is considered.” He is basically saying do whatever means necessary to make the most out of it and if it applies to the individual, it only needs to benefit the individual but if it is referring to the community, the community must benefit as a whole. One should feel pleasure, but avoid pain since it represents the evil in one’s life. The ultimate goal of one’s life is to reach the climax of happiness, because that marks the end of the path. The author appeals to all three devices: ethos, logos and pathos because they are all incorporated into his writings.
To find where this happiness comes from, Aristotle explored nature through biology. Based off the Stanford Encyclopedia for Philosophy and a website called The Pursuit of Happiness that talks about the history of Aristotle, he knew that what would ultimately make humans happy would have to...
Happiness, to Aristotle, is a term for which much exactitude must be made. He understands that, "Happiness both the refined and the few call it, but about the nature of this Happiness, men dispute." As such, he goes to great lengths to attain a fairly accurate accounting of what he sees as Happiness. He begins by illustrating that Happiness is an End, establishes what he finds the work of Man to be, sets conditions on being happy, and then explains where in Man the cultivation of Happiness is to be sought. The result of all these ideas is his fully developed sense of Happiness, an understanding vital to his conception of Ethics.
Jeremy Bentham is widely regarded as the father of utilitarianism. He was born in 1748 into a family of lawyers and was himself, training to join the profession. During this process however, he became disillusioned by the state British law was in and set out to reform the system into a perfect one based on the ‘Greatest Happiness Principle,’ ‘the idea that pleasurable consequences are what qualify an action as being morally good’. Bentham observed that we are all governed by pain and pleasure; we all naturally aim to seek pleasure and avoid pain. He then decided that the best moral principle for governing our lives is one which uses this, the ‘Greatest Happiness Principle.’ This is that the amount of overall happiness or unhappiness that is caused by an action should determine whether an action is right or wrong. He stated,
who achieve sense of meaning in their lives are happier than those who live from one pleasure to another.
Aristotle feels we have a rational capacity and the exercising of this capacity is the perfecting of our natures as human beings. For this reason, pleasure alone cannot establish human happiness, for pleasure is what animals seek and human beings have higher capacities than animals. The goal is to express our desires in ways that are appropriate to our natures as rational animals. Aristotle states that the most important factor in the effort to achieve happiness is to have a good moral character, what he calls complete virtue. In order to achieve the life of complete virtue, we need to make the right choices, and this involves keeping our eye on the future, on the ultimate result we want for our lives as a whole. We will not achieve happiness simply by enjoying the pleasures of the moment. We must live righteous and include behaviors in our life that help us do what is right and avoid what is wrong. It is not enough to think about doing the right thing, or even intend to do the right thing, we have to actually do it. Happiness can occupy the place of the chief good for which humanity should aim. To be an ultimate end, an act must be independent of any outside help in satisfying one’s needs and final, that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else and it must be
The pursuit for happiness has been a quest for man throughout the ages. In his ethics, Aristotle argues that happiness is the only thing that the rational man desires for its own sake, thus, making it good and natural. Although he lists three types of life for man, enjoyment, statesman, and contemplative, it is the philosopher whom is happiest of all due to his understanding and appreciation of reason. Aristotle’s version of happiness is not perceived to include wealth, honor, or trivial
Bentham devised The Greatest Happiness Principle that states “that actions are immoral if they are not the action that appears to maximise the happiness of all the people likely to be affected; only the action that appears to maximise the happiness of all the people likely to be affected is the morally right action.” Bentham used his happiness principle to help decide how legal matters would go and created the Hedonic Calculus which was a way to calculate the amount of pleasure that would be derived from an action. There were multiple factors that were taken into account when using the Hedonic calculus but generally which ever decision yielded the greatest amount of pleasure for the greatest number of people would be the decision
According to Webster dictionary the word Happiness in defined as Enjoying, showing, or marked by pleasure, satisfaction, or joy. People when they think of happiness, they think about having to good feeling inside. There are many types of happiness, which are expressed in many ways. Happiness is something that you can't just get it comes form your soul. Happiness is can be changed through many things that happen in our every day live.
Happiness is a psychological term that is hard to define since it is particular to each individual. However, we can define it as a psychological sense of life satisfaction, pleasure, and positive emotional condition. For some people, it is difficult to achieve happiness. In contrast, other people can find happiness in the simplest things. However, remember that happiness is in our hands. Just keep seeking it and we will finally be
Happiness can be viewed as wealth, honour, pleasure, or virtue. Aristotle believes that wealth is not happiness, because wealth is just an economic value, but can be used to gain some happiness; wealth is a means to further ends. The good life, according to Aristotle, is an end in itself. Similar to wealth, honour is not happiness because honour emphases on the individuals who honour in comparison to the honouree. Honour is external, but happiness is not. It has to do with how people perceive one another; the good life is intrinsic to the...