According to a friend, happiness cannot be permanently found, but rather experienced as a state amongst a variety of others. I have no reason to argue, but it wasn’t the answer I was looking for. There was a pause in which she considered for a second more and supplied what I had been looking for: “I suppose what makes me happy, though, is being surrounded by things and people I love.” Of course, the conversation could have continued with my agitating habit of that previously mentioned ‘why’, but it carried off in another direction and I was left with that.
It would have been beneficial to know what ‘things’ encompassed. Her bed, her computer, her TV, her collection of clown figurines, her favorite book? What things and why place that value in them? I never asked, but it struck me as something of interest as I went forward to read the philosophies on happiness by Aristotle and Epicurus.
The main component of happiness to both Aristotle and Epicurus is philosophical contemplation. In terms of Socrates, asking why; in terms of Plato, crawling out of the cave into ‘the light’. This core is the only part of their theories that match up.
To Aristotle, happiness was not an emotion, but a state of being. The way in which one could be happy was to exercise their rationality and live virtuously. To be a philosopher was, then, the top tier of happiness. In this fashion, one could be rational and live by the orders of the law. The only method by which one could be a philosopher or attain happiness, though, was to live in a community that bred good values and ultimately lived a life that was in benefit of said community. While promoting the place of philosopher above politician, Aristotle made it pretty clear that one could not even become a philosopher without the placement of order in a society.
In this sense, Aristotle had a very clear cut vision of a person that could live in a way that defined happiness. Anyone born outside of order, born with a disorder or a disfigurement, could not reach where people of beauty and family values could. By this strict definition, not everyone born could become happy as Aristotle saw it.
Any individual happiness remained second to that of the community, which had to be great and accommodating as to breed happy individuals. This cyclical process seems more utopian than actual, and creates an elitist class, much like one seen in Plato’s Republic.
Epicurus deviates from Aristotle quite clearly, putting value in friendships for the sake of friendships and rejecting the societal structure found in cities like Athens. While holding that reflective existence defines happiness, Epicurus would rather do it for the sake of himself and his friends than for a community at large.
The thing that Epicurus is most clearly known for is his idea that happiness is the absence of pain. This statement also remains the one that people usually manipulate to serve their own purposes. An absence of pain does not mean the surplus of bodily pleasures.
It is also this idea that separate Epicurus from city societies, ones ruled by law and order. Under the pressures of law, one lives a life riddled with fear. They know that they cannot perform this or that action and carefully, always step around on eggshells because of the possibility of arrest. How can happiness spread while citizens shakily tip-toe under order’s imposing figure?
Epicurus decided to follow his own realization and moved with his friends out of a city atmosphere into something of a commune. The fact that Epicurus brought along his friends spoke to another aspect of his philosophy, which was the importance of friendship. Loyalty and closeness in friendship illustrated the just side of man and came naturally.
These concepts of happiness do not fall quite commonly in the ways of the modern world. Contemplation does not rank the highest on any poll of happiness. Pieces of their philosophies persist—the importance of friendship, the idea of community breeding values—but neither completely falls in line with modern life style. And neither did these concepts fall completely in line back in the days of ancient Greece.
Happiness remains a subjective piece of life, one that people will always seek an answer for, but I do not believe that any way holds truer than another. Some may find it in living a life of virtue, others may find it in items of sentimental value, others in travel or education or camaraderie. What happiness even is remains up for debate. Why we seek it over equality or freedom or progress remains a mystery. Or, maybe, it allows for those things. For if we think, following Epicurean and Aristotelian, will we eventually come to the realization that those take precedence over material or power?
No comments:
Post a Comment