Chapter 12 : Happiness Review

                              Chapter 12: Happiness

Head staue of  Epicurus -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus

"Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get."-Anonymous

            Happiness can be expressed and defined in a variety of ways. Aristippus is a Greek Philosopher that "declared happiness to be the sum total of pleasures experienced during one's lifetime"   ( Janero & Altshuler , The Art of Being Human: The Humanities as a technique for living, 2011, p.386).  He describes humans expressing happiness in a selfish way, only carig for their own comforts in the end.  He also makes a connection between how happiness only exists within the moment of pleasure. This concept of happiness with pleasure is known as Hedonism. With believing in the philosophy Hedonism comes with assumptions. One of these Hedonist assumptions is that "no amount of pleasure is ever too much" ( Janero & Altshuler , The Art of Being Human: The Humanities as a technique for living, 2011, p.388). This assumption refers to pleasure not being harmful or ever not enough in the idea of Hedonism. The truth behind this is that Hedonist actually can recognize that overindulgence in pleasure can be unhealthy in large amounts. An example of this can be seen in things like food where eating can bring one pleasure but eating too much isn't neccessarily good because of health risks. These health risks can and would most likely lead to unhappiness. Hedonism isn't neccessarily an agreed upon philosophy on happiness. Philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato saw criticism within the correlation of happiness and pleasure . Another perspective and conflict on Hedonism is with the religion where pleasure being denied actually brings happiness to an individual.

          Another philosophy on happiness is known as epicureanism. Epicureanism is the philosophy that feeling of no pain is where happiness stems from. Epicurus is the Greek Philopher who came up wih the idea of epicureanism. Epicurus views on happiness initially aligned with Hedonism and that pleasure brings about happiness but added that that more pleasure doesn't actually make us happier. He saw many criticisms in Hedonism and how it seemed temporary and almost insecure in nature for it's overreliance in wanting long periods of pleasure. Epicurus didn't want to feel restricted in pleasure only being happiness so he proposed that humans should control how much pleasure something could give us so pain can be reduced with the pleasure. Compared to Hedonist, epicureans follow more nonphysical forms of pleasure and has more of a focus on the arts , settling for smaller things in life often. An example of an epicurean outlook is a character from Ernest Hemingway's story "In Another Country" who comes to the conclusion that one should not marry after the lost of his wife and their falling out in marriage. This character feels trap within the marriage bacause of this lost and wished to hold something he could't be able to lose in the first place. This also illustrates the epicurean outlook on not wanting to hold physical things for pleasure.

   Stoicism is a similiar philosophy on Epicurean but instead of gaining happiness from avoiding things that cause pain, stoicism focuses on coping in order to achieve it. Stoicism is more thought based and builds up a plan to how to deal with pain and things that cause displeasure to individuals. Stoics look at the roots of unhappiness and comes up with methods and ways one should go about them in there daily life. One teacher of the stoic idea is Epicetus who was a man that grew up in war ad was tortured in his lifetime. Epictetus is a great example of a stoic who has gone through pain in life but instead of dissociating with it and accepting his despair, he faced it head on and pushed through. This resistance to pain is what brought him happiness later on in life after he was liberated. The quote above follows the philosophy of stoicism.It states clearly how success and happiness isn't the same thing. The quote defines happiness as the decisions and process an individual made to achieve happiness.

A. Dagli Orti/©De Agostini Editore/age fotostock (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aristotle/images-videos)

" A person who lives a totally virtuous life may in the end regret that all goals have not been reached..."- ( Janero & Altshuler , The Art of Being Human: The Humanities as a technique for living, 2011, p.397)

      Aristotle's view on happiness in humans is that things could provide happiness but not exactly be happiness. He seperated the feeling from the thing essentially.Since humans strive for greater goods for happiness, Aristotle defines happiness as goods we achieve over time to achieve the 'final good'.Aristotle's goal on his implications of happiness always followed that the idea that in the end good prevails with reason ad virtue. Living with reason and virtue allows for an inidividual to feel happiness in life because of the fact they were able to make the right decisions in life with a fullfiling purpose to it.  The quote above sums up how being virtuous in life may ot complete all goals one has set up and can lead to regret. Although true, Aristotle believed that this regret doesn't take away from the happiess in life and being reminded of this regret can actually encourage one to strive for different forms of happiness. This relates back to the idea of having goals over time being achieved being happiness. 

     Another factor of happiness in Aristotle's philosophy was the purpose of governement in it. Aristotle believed the goverment's main focus should be on it's citizes path of happiness under it. This include how the government handled law and order in the favor of the citizens. Since happiness comes up through reason and virtue, Aristotle believed the government had to be the model of said reason and virtue.

Photo of publication of " The Diary Of A Young Girl", 1993 (https://www.worldcat.org/title/anne-frank-the-diary-of-a-young-girl/oclc/28445944)

" Whosoever is happy will make others happy too"- Anne Frank

        There are many theories on happiness but not all of them relate to everyone and their experiences with happiness and in other cases unhappiness. In our world, there are those who lived a life of hardship and have unrightfully suffered so theories like Aristotle's on happiness doesn't correlate well since these experiences didn't often occur because of how good one's values are in order to achieve happiness. These experiences can also often be in the way of happiness altogether.

The humanities have expressed this side of human misery with works like Les Miserables by Victor Hugh which was a story all on the poor in France.

     

        Despite there being suffering that causes a bock on the road to happiness, there are those who have achieved happiness nonetheless despite the suffering. One example of a model of happy life is Anne Frank. Anne Frank was a young jewish girl during the holocaust that hid from Nazis with her family and others in an attic. Her diary , which was published across the world, showed insight on her thoughts and feelings during her time spent. Despite her unfortunate circumstances her diary was light hearted yet mature. She wrote about a variety of things like going against the norms of her time and doing her own thing and believing that one is bad. The quote above is by Anne and sums up her resolve on happiness.  She believed happiness can be gained by others happiness which is a mature mindset that followed Aristotle's theory of happiness. Even though she was captured and died in a concentration camp, she was still able to achieve her version of happiness in a bittersweet way through her diary.

Conclusion

     In conclusion, happiness can be defined in a variety of ways. There are many theories of what happiness is and how to gain it but there is no one truth on happiness. Happiness can depend on an individual's experiences and values but sometimes achieving happiness can't be done by everyone due to circumstances out of there hand. Within humanities, happiness can also be expressed in a variety of ways like art and music.