Happiness is simply a matter of feeling good (pleasure and enjoyment)

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Philosophy
Happiness can be defined as an emotional or mental state where an individual has positive feelings ranging from satisfaction to intense joy. Aristotle view happiness as more dependent on ourselves rather than how anybody else makes us feel. Aristotle refers to happiness as one of the major purposes as to why human lives on this earth and also its one of the goals that each human being tends to achieve. Moreover, he believed that a happy life required achievements of a wide range of conditions which included physical and mental wellbeing. In this article, we are going to critique the claim that happiness is the same as having pleasure or enjoying the moment.
In the modern world happiness has largely been influenced by personal feelings that a person has at a given point in time. People view happiness nowadays as the times they are having a beer with their best friends or watching their favorite teams play together. However, people like Aristotle refer to happiness as a final result or goal that comprises of an individual’s total life. Aristotle views happiness as something that cannot be attained or fade away after some few hours such as pleasurable sensations (Mathews & Gareth 186-199). However, he views happiness as a measure of how well people have lived their lives to their maximum potential as human beings. He views happiness as the achievements that human beings have had up to the recent moment. Therefore, people cannot conclude that an individual has had a happy life until his life comes to an end.

Moreover, we cannot argue that children are happy unless they are full potential as human beings are realised, and that’s when we can start judging whether they are living a happy life or not. Therefore, we can learn from Aristotle that a single day cannot make a human being happy rather his full life achievements can make a human being happy.
We can also argue that happiness is not a matter of feeling good from Aristotle’s Hierarchical view of nature (Bhat, 99). If we have a check on nature, we realize that it’s made up of four things. First of all, there are minerals such as metals whose only purpose is to come to rest and have no soul. There are also plants which have a life, and their main goal is to grow and seek nourishment, and they can be satisfied after achieving this goal. We also have animals which have a higher level of life, and their main goal is to reproduce and have pleasure.
We can differentiate between a happy and sad animal according to their level of health. However, human beings differ from the rest of the animals since they can act according to various principles that make them responsible for the choices they make. Therefore, what seems good to an animal can be different from what is good to people since we possess better potentials and capacities. People contain greater capacity than animals, and this is what defines their nature. Therefore, we can conclude that feeling good and pleasure cannot fulfill human beings happiness, as this is what animals tend to find and human beings have very high potential than animals.
Also, we learn from Aristotle that having a friend is a major method that can make a human being achieve happiness. There are different types of friendship, and the best type is based on virtues. In this type of friendship, individual wishes for what is best for their friends regardless to various pleasures, they may have. Moreover, this kind of friendship last for a very long period, and it’s also difficult to have such kind of friendship. The reason behind this is because it’s hard to find people with such virtues and it also requires a lot of work to maintain such kind of friendship. Aristotle discovers that it is hard to have a large number of virtuous friends. Friendship is indeed highly valued since no one in this world can live without a friend. However, people searching for honor will look for flattery friends or people who are at higher positions than them to receive personal gains from them. However, this kind of friendship does not lead to enjoyment rather it leads to personal gains and therefore proving that happiness is simply not a matter of enjoyment and feeling good.
Also for one to attain complete happiness, one has to acquire good moral values that Aristotle calls them virtues. Aristotle views virtue as values which cannot be passed from one person to another rather one has to possess them by themselves. Moreover, people cannot possess some of the few virtues rather they have to work hard and acquire all of them. According to Aristotle attaining all the goods, health, knowledge, and wealth in a human beings lifetime lead to happiness in their lives. However, for them to attain this achievement they have to make hard choices and sacrifice various pleasures to achieve them.
For human beings to achieve their happiness they have to settle for the best, which requires greater struggle rather than the worst which leads to immediate pressure. It would be more fun and enjoyable to spend the night playing cards with friends, but it would be preferable to spend the night revising for the final paper of the term. Therefore for human beings to have a good character, they have to strive and put efforts in making the correct decisions even during difficult situations. Therefore, this proofs that happiness is indeed not a case of enjoying yourself and having pleasures rather it’s a matter of possessing the required virtues that will lead a human being to make good decisions that will make them happy afterwards. Human beings have to avoid various pleasures for them to live a happy life.
Moreover, drug usage which has become a major menace to the society is another example that indeed criticises our chosen statement. Nowadays people can have an intense feeling of happiness through snorting some cocaine and taking all their troubles away from their minds. However, this short-term pleasure leads to longer time suffering in the future and making the addicted individuals miserable.
The reason behind this is because the individuals feel miserable after a short time of period and decide to take another snort of cocaine and this act goes on until the person become addicted. Moreover, addiction leads to individuals spending their money on drugs and thus draining all their funds and also becoming a burden to their families. Moreover, all the virtues that Aristotle believes that lead to a life of happiness such as courage, generosity, and friendship disappears due to the use of drugs. Therefore due to choosing various pleasures such as drug usage leads to individual living an unhappy and miserable life in the future.
Aristotle also criticises the culture of instant pleasures which has mainly dominated most of the societies in the modern world. He believes that for people to achieve all the virtues needed to live happily, they need to make certain choices which involve making critical decisions about the future. Moreover, Aristotle claims that people cannot attain happiness by enjoying themselves for a few hours or minutes. However, most people in the modern world have been unable to overcome this pleasure, and people have become slaves to their expensive lives. This situation means that these pleasures do not lead to happy life since people must work very hard to satisfy their tastes.
Socrates, on the other hand, viewed happiness as what all people desire to have since it’s the final purpose of every person’s activities (Oishi & Shigehiro, 559-597). He also viewed happiness as not depending on external things rather it depends on how a person utilises the external things. He thought that when a wise person is given the money, he uses the money very well and makes himself richer. However, when an ignorant person is given the same amount of money, he will misuse it and finally he will end up in a much worse position that he was before. Therefore, this leads us to a conclusion that money or wealth itself cannot make an individual happy and it’s only good when it’s in the hands of the right person. Moreover, Socrates makes it clear that happiness is not found from the wealth or goods than an individual possesses rather, but rather from how the individuals decide to use them. Socrates believes that happiness is achieved through achieving various desires that individuals have. Therefore, individuals have to forego various pleasures and enjoyments to live a happy life.
In conclusion, happiness cannot be viewed as simply a case of having the pleasure and enjoying oneself, having the pleasure and enjoying life. Happiness cannot be achieved by the small pleasures that human beings have each and every day rather it’s achieved at the ends of an individual’s life. In this case, happiness is viewed as a goal and not a short-term state. Moreover, happiness is achieved through acquiring various virtues such as courage, friendship, generosity and justice. Therefore, due to the above reason happiness cannot be regarded as simply as a case of enjoying the moment and having all the pleasures in life.
Works Cited
Bhat, P. R. “Religious Ethics, General Ethics, and Engineering Ethics: A Reflection.” Contemporary Ethical Issues in Engineering (2015): 99.
Matthews, Gareth B. “Death in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.” The Oxford Handbook of Death, New York (2013): 186-99.Oishi, Shigehiro, et al. “Concepts of happiness across time and cultures.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 39.5 (2013): 559-577.