Happiness and the Good Life Essay

What is the relation between living a entire demeanor and being happy? To many, the bang-up disembodied spirit is a financially prosperous life, and mirth lies in the possession of wealth. Worldly success is what counts, and anyone who is not successful in the usual sense is counted a failure. Others strive for a life based on honor and public recognition. A secure life is made up of hobnobbing with the salutary people in the right settings, and happiness is a matter of gaining respect. Along with these, there are lives that tape by their living a desire for reputation or great power that inspires great efforts. Others, who are not drawn to wealth, power or glory because of the difficulties involved in acquireing them, may choose the pursuit of pleasure. A hot and happy life is one in which pleasures outweigh the pains overall. some questions have been asked about the good life and happiness. People constantly dress those questions with their lives, and we see many dif ferent papers of the good life and happiness contend out in the strivings of human beings to live surface and be happy.The past Greeks entreated their friends to do fountainhead and fare salubrious in this life. These two, they thought, held the keys to human felicity. Doing well concerns ourselves, our own actions and feelings. We have some control over these aspects of our lives. So when we wish someone to do well in life, we express the hope that the person get out be moral and fair in his or her transaction with early(a)s. Beyond securing basic physical survival, someone who does well in life can sleep with a clear conscience, whether blessed with material success or not. From many a philosophic point of view, the good life has an intrinsically moral core that involves compassion for the suffering of others and acting correctly in the world.Faring well concerns events and occurrences over which we do not have so much control. Faring well means succeeding in life, com ing into a prosperous condition, with all the benefits that come with money and social acceptance. Someone who is faring well in life has had a bit of good luck. It is possible to do everything right in order to succeed, that still fail to do so. For example, you can study hard for your degree, get your professional qualifications, work diligently, run low competent, but still not succeed. The cards may not retrovert your way. As Sartre says, You are free to try, but not to succeed. This seems right to me, and so I will come down with Aristotle against Plato on this point, that doing well is not all that is involved in attaining happiness in life.Platos Socrates gorgeously says that the good person cannot be harmed, that virtue is knowledge, and that happiness consists entirely of doing well and being just. Aristotle argues that a degree of luck plays into our happiness. He insists that most of our happiness is in our own hands, but that it can be affected by outside circumstanc es. So while being happy is mostly a matter of doing well (and thinking well), great misfortunes can ill-use our happiness. It may be that such a person, by doing well, will attain a degree of dignity in suffering, but he will not be happy or, as Aristotle has it, blessed.In light of this result, I hazard an intuitive philosophic account of the relation between the good life and happiness. Living a good life is a requisite but not a sufficient condition for happiness. In other words, it is possible to live a good life without being happy, but not happy without living a good life. This a philosophical account of the relation because many philosophers have a particular idea of happiness and the good life that is not shared by everyone, with their violence on clarity of thought and sound reasoning.In addition, though philosophers suggest the philosophical life as both the happiest and the best, they are not in a position to legislate for everyone what happiness must be. Neverthele ss, the traditional philosophical view is not without support. All we have to do is look at the results of many lives that strive for wealth, power, fame, glory or pleasure. So many disasters befall those who pursue a good life with no moral core, or reflective turn of mind, that it makes some sense, as philosophers argue, to pursue the wisdom to understand the good life, and, within that life, such happiness human beings can attain.