Happiness as the Ultimate End of Human Action Essay

I believe there are two types of people in this world: Those who are happy. And those who genuinely believe that after purchasing a new luxury car they can â€Å"Be Happy.†. While the latter may find their new addition quite valuable, the former finds their self-fulfillment through a process of more sharpened quality. Those who choose to obtain the â€Å"good life† through the acquisition of goods and services are said to be misled regarding the true meaning of happiness. This false interpretation of self-satisfaction is what many of us strive for today. We want an immediate ‘feel good’ fix, which we often tend to pay for later. We use pleasure, wealth, and honor as a means to identify those who are the happiest (Stumpf and Feiser 84).†¦show more content†¦We need it; so much of it that if we don’t get it, things go wrong. Differing from this edacious part of the soul is our Spirit. It is the most volatile part of the soul. The Spirit is whe re one gets their love and need for honor and victory. It is the part that gets revved up and, at the drop of a hat, will change rapidly if conditions are conducive. However, like the Appetite, the Spirit needs some sort of outer guidance and direction in order to achieve its goals (Lorenz). This conductor-like, third part of the soul is known as Reason. Its job is to determine what the prominent objective of the soul is and to guide, govern, and discipline everything else towards that goal. It asks the question, â€Å"How should I do that?† or â€Å"Should I stop that?† Just as the Appetite and Spirit have passion, Reason too has the ambition to fulfill its ardent desires. This indicates that all parts of the soul are passionate. And if someone happens to have soul whose pertinent passion is Right Reasoning, they are said to have virtue (Ross). This idea is best illustrated in Plato’s Allegory o’ Chariot, which appears in the Phaedrus, where he tells of a horse-drawn chariot on a journey to the â€Å"shining city.† The chariot is led by two horses, a light horse and a dark horse, of which are guided by a driver. On their path towards the city, the light horse notices a wild horse race about to take off over in the field and starts to prance towards it. The driver noticesShow MoreRelatedTrue Happiness Essay924 Words   |  4 PagesAccording to Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, happiness is the ultimate end of humanity, as everything humans do is done in order to obtain it, and it is gained via the achievement of full excellence of the soul. Happiness is the greatest of all human good, because, as an end, it is an end unto itself, meaning that humans do not use it as a means to any other end. It is not conditional happiness that Aristotle lauds, but rather something that is more akin to the modern definition of joy. 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