Texts Define Eudaimonia Response To Discussion

Reflect with your peers on what their account reveals about the virtuous life, whether that conflicts with some of the values and choices common in society, etc.

I do not think that Aristotle would consider being hooked up to a machine would be a person experiencing eudaimonia. The texts define eudaimonia as, “is a life that is truly flourishing (Thames, B. 2018)”. Being hooked up to a machine would not be you having a flourishing life. It wouldn’t truly be you feeling a certain type of way, it would be the machine tricking your mind into thinking that you were happening, or something that brings you happiness is happening. In life, you need to overcome hardships to be happy in my opinion. I think you need to feel stressed or angry or upset to really achieve happiness. If you never had to complete something, with a lot of work, you would never have the sense of self-accomplishment or be proud of yourself. I think all of the other emotions humans experience will eventually lead to happiness through which you take the lessons you may have learned.

I would not want to be hooked up to the machine. I like to feel happy but I also think that you need to feel sad or mad in your life, need to let your emotions out. If everyone was happy all the time, I feel like the world would be a different place but you also have to think about what makes some people happy. Murderers for example, if they had they chance to do what made them happy all the time, people would be getting murdered just to keep someone happy.

I think that there is 100% a difference between feeling happy and being happy. You could feel happy for a second; you see a puppy, you are feeling happy for the moment. Being happy, to me, means you are living your life to the fullest, waking up and feeling happy because you are loved and proud of your life. I think happiness can be mistaken; referring back to my example with murderers, they might be happy but is it morally correct? Would the rest of the world be okay with murder happening because it makes that one person happy? I know that it is a pretty dark example but I think it falls in line with happiness being mistaken from the person feeling it.