What is Happiness? Essay -- John Stuart Mill Essays

What is ecstasy? People have agonized over this question for centuries. permit me start this essay by answering a somewhat easier question what isnt happiness? felicitousness is NOT feeling good all the time. Happiness is a combination of human emotions and states of mind. Exploring this state of being has consumed the philosophical minds of the ages and will continue to do so for ages to come. In an unofficial poll of students at accede University, I found that of the fifty-eight students and superstar professor, males and females of several ethnic backgrounds and age groups, that I asked the question What is happiness to you?, all of them had very different physical, intellectual, or wound up motivator for their happiness. Only the professor stated what happiness was to him. The students, ranging in age from 20 years to 45 years, all spoke of material things that would make them happy. They couldnt face to grasp happiness as a concept in itself. The questions that ar e asked when exploring the concept of happiness should begin with desire to know if it is a pleasure base in our basic and primitive emotions. Next, is happiness motivated by pure desire? Does a mental state of contentment produce happiness? Does happiness come from a simple, physical feeling? Maybe happiness is a combination of all of these. According to John Stuart Mill, The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain by unhappiness, pain, ... ...rabstract thought separates them from any other creature on earth, but it also makesthem unique unto themselves. What makes one person happy may or may not make anotherperson happy. Happiness, in and of itself, in my opinion, in unattainable . To be content witha minimum of worries is as close to absolute happiness as a person can come. For myself, I think that true happiness is an illusion. I believe in the desire-driventheory of happiness. When I find the need for the illusion of happiness, I attempt toachieve it by fulfilling my temporary needs through the gratification of my sprydesires. I find that contentment and the drive to continue to achieve my desires is muchmore important than the illusion of happiness.Works CitedPojman, Louis P. Classics of Philosophy Volume II youthful and Contemporary. New YorkOxford UP, 1998.