Who Is The Happy Warrior? Philosophy?

When it comes to happiness, people acknowledges it as the feelings of pleasure and satisfaction one gets from doing something that makes them happy. The principles of happiness are researched by philosophers such as Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. John Stuart Mill’s autobiography, A Crisis in My Mental History: One Stage Onward, shows that he believes the happiness of oneself is not meant to be forced. However, the enjoyment of itself should allow itself to be discovered on its own, and “find happiness by the by”. I agree with John Mill’s statement of an individual’s happiness not to be constrained, but to appear naturally.

In her article “How Happy Are You and Why?,” Sonja Lyubomirsky argues that people have control over their own happiness. Lyubomirsky supports her claims with her interviews with happy people and scientific studies. Her purpose is to consider steps that people can take in order to become happier. She establishes an informal relationship with her audience of unhappy people.

As human beings we are naturally wired to seek happiness wherever we can find it. When we don’t, we may enter a stage of anger, anxiety, or distress. That’s why it is our personal goal to look for happiness and preserve it once we acquire it. Many have explored ways to find what triggers this feeling of “happiness” and what we can do to keep it; nonetheless, the evidence found is hardly sufficient to make a public statement on how to find happiness. For this reason, most of the time we speculate what might provoke this feeling of contentment. “Happiness is a glass half empty,” an essay written by Oliver Burkeman, highlights the importance of happiness and discloses how we can find delight through unorthodox methods. The prime objective of this piece of writing is to inform the audience about the effect of happiness on their lives and how their usual attempts of becoming happier can sabotage achieving this feeling. Furthermore, he wants to promote the benefits of pessimism and describe how it can help us in the long run. The author utilizes pronouns, logos, and pathos in order to prove his point and draw the audience into his essay, in an attempt of making them reconsider the way they live their lives and adopt this new pessimistic way that would greatly boost their level of happiness.

Mankind must by this time have acquired positive beliefs as to the effects of some actions on their happiness; and the beliefs which have thus come down are the rules of morality for the multitude, and for the philosopher until he has succeeded in finding better. That philosophers might easily do this, even now, on many subjects; that the received code of ethics is by no means of divine right; and that mankind have still much to learn as to the effects of actions on general happiness, I admit or rather earnestly maintain.

In modern society, the line between pleasure and happiness is commonly blurred. While pleasures are momentary feelings of joy, they do not entail true happiness. True happiness is present even at the worst of times. It is there in moments of delight as well as in moments of pain and distress. On the journey to a good life, discovering a true sense of happiness is essential. This concept is portrayed in The History by Herodotus and Happiness by Richard Taylor. While these readings define happiness differently, they both demonstrate the idea that a life well lived consists of long term happiness as opposed to short term pleasures.

In” Beyond Happiness: The Upside of Feeling

The concept of happiness has eluded philosophers and intellectuals since the beginning of mankind’s ability to reason; though many have attempted to create overarching theories regarding the phenomenon, all have fallen short of grasping the dual nature of its formation: both demanding of hard work and of faith in some higher, seemingly transcendent force. Giorgio Agamben’s piece “Magic and Happiness,” an excerpt from his work Profanations, is no exception. The passage argues in favor of a belief in “magic,” a divine and all-encompassing force that presents, in his opinion, the solitary path towards true happiness. His argument, formed around the notion that persistent effort and achievement ultimately cannot yield happiness in the long

We are a pleasure driven society always waiting to be amused. Self indulgence is a very natural aspect of human life. Does pleasure affect our lives? Will it make us happy at the end? Well, Aristotle will let us know what it means to be happy and have a good life in the Nicomachean Ethics. In the process, he reveals his own account of pleasure as well as other philosophers opposing views on the subject. The author highlights the key them by telling us that pleasure is not the chief good. However, it is an end in itself, which makes it good. In addition, pleasure is also not a process because it doesn’t involve any movement from incompleteness to completeness. According to Aristotle, happiness is

Can one ever know what truly makes them happy? Is it one particular item or person responsible for one’s happiness or is it a variety of people, places, or things? Happiness is a state of well-being, which results in living a good life. Even though there’s a definition of happiness, people still have different opinions on how we reach happiness. Epicurus tackles the questions, “what is the key to being happy?” and helps one understand how we ought to understand happiness. Epicurus agree that happiness is the ultimate life goal and the reason for human existence. In this essay, I will view and discuss Epicurus’s thoughts on happiness and also share my thoughts on his views.

The documentary Happy, directed by Roko Belic, shares a tale of HAPPY taking a journey across the swamps of Louisiana in search for what makes people happy. The emotion happiness is often difficult to perceive. To an extent, this tale correlates well with Mill’s Greatest Happiness Principle. This principle explains that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” Examining the human characteristic of “happiness” and what it really is, and how the people achieve it, this film depicts these and relates it to life. The Greatest Happiness Principle applies to this documentary in several ways.

The definition of happiness varies from individual to individual. Some argue that happiness is an emotion, others argue that it is a state of being. The various perceptions that people hold of happiness illuminates its abstract and ambiguous nature. This variability, in regards to happiness, is displayed throughout history from the Hellenistic schools of philosophy and the Ancient philosophers to more modern day theologians such as C.S Lewis and Alister McGrath. Despite the various views of happiness, there are many similarities between them. Chapter 3 of Alister McGrath’s Theology The Basics and excerpts from Plato’s The Republic both depict distinct but similar views of happiness, however the perception of happiness implied

the profound feeling of individual fulfillment while accomplishing one's objective is ordinarily separated into three groups; external goods, goods of the soul, and goods of the body, as showed up inside The Nichomachian Ethics, Book I, pg. 184-195, by Aristotle. Moreover, the general concept of happiness is all different within our own particular definition. Nevertheless, what wound up obviously interesting from this concentrate happens with the way by which Aristotle underscores on how joy is gained.

Over the course of time there have been a multitude of philosophers that have claimed to find the true meaning of happiness. One of these philosophers was Epicurus who originally studied “sensual pleasure” and then moved to a discussion on one’s inner happiness through friendship, freedom, and thought. The Consolation of Philosophy tracks Epicurus’s evolution of philosophical ideas throughout his lifetime to express to the reader how to create a happy and healthy life.

In Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents, he presents the reader with the paradoxical question of happiness. Freud questions ‘What is called happiness in its narrowest sense comes from the satisfaction - most often instantaneous - of pent-up needs which have reached great intensity, and by its very nature can only be a transitory experience.’ (Freud, Civilization and its Discontents pg. 41) Freud points to this innate desire for happiness. Individuals are ruled by a paramount ‘pleasure principle’ which is strong enough to influence desires, thoughts, and urges. Man’s Ego is the driver, so to speak, of these inherent desires. While thoroughly defining happiness, Freud also defines the things that lead to man’s suffering, and the ways in which man can circumvent that unhappiness. Freud’s discursive prose on the topic of happiness serves more as a

Understanding how the mind works has always been a major goal throughout philosophy, and an important piece of this deals with how humans come to experience the world. Many philosophers have attempted to investigate this issue, and proposed a framework by which human understanding could be understood. Happiness is one of those issues that philosophers have tried to attempt to investigate its understanding and how it is important for every human being to have happiness. Generally speaking we see that people would go through any lengths possible by which to acquire many varied materials and issues use to induce pleasures in each person, and intrinsically, this emotion happiness remains the ultimate goal. John