Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 What Is Happiness?
- 2 Happiness as Fulfillment
- 3 Aristotle's Ethics
- 4 Actualization: Psychological Views
- 5 Finding Potentials
- 6 The Things We Need to Be Happy: Goods, Intrinsic Motivation, and The Golden Mean
- 7 Introduction to Virtue
- 8 Some of the More Important Moral Virtues
- 9 Virtue and Emotion
- 10 Early Psychological Views of Virtue and Emotion
- 11 Virtue and Emotion: Recent Psychological Views
- 12 The Physiological Basis of Virtue
- 13 Emotional Intelligence
- 14 The Development of Virtue
- 15 Psychological Views of Virtue Development
- 16 The Polis
- 17 Contemplation: A Different Kind of Happiness
- References
- Index
- References
6 - The Things We Need to Be Happy: Goods, Intrinsic Motivation, and The Golden Mean
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 What Is Happiness?
- 2 Happiness as Fulfillment
- 3 Aristotle's Ethics
- 4 Actualization: Psychological Views
- 5 Finding Potentials
- 6 The Things We Need to Be Happy: Goods, Intrinsic Motivation, and The Golden Mean
- 7 Introduction to Virtue
- 8 Some of the More Important Moral Virtues
- 9 Virtue and Emotion
- 10 Early Psychological Views of Virtue and Emotion
- 11 Virtue and Emotion: Recent Psychological Views
- 12 The Physiological Basis of Virtue
- 13 Emotional Intelligence
- 14 The Development of Virtue
- 15 Psychological Views of Virtue Development
- 16 The Polis
- 17 Contemplation: A Different Kind of Happiness
- References
- Index
- References
Summary
if any one gives too great a power to anything, too large a sail to a vessel, too much food to the body, too much authority to the mind, and does not observe the mean, everything is overthrown.
Plato, Laws III, 691Nathaniel Hawthorne claimed that happiness comes to us like a butterfly, alighting on our shoulder when we least expect it. That's a wonderfully romantic idea but probably wrong. A good life usually comes slowly, over time, and requires effort. Benjamin Franklin said “The Declaration only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”
Happiness requires the satisfaction of many needs. Remember Maslow's hierarchy and that, depending upon our place along the hierarchy, we desire and seek the things that we need. For the hungry it is nourishment, for the homeless it is security, and for the lonely it is friendship.
According to Aristotle, the things we seek are “goods.” Goods may differ among us – what is a good for one person may be of little interest to another if they are at different places along the hierarchy of needs. Poetry, science, and philosophy are of little importance to the hungry and the fearful. Goods are defined relative to needs and needs lower on the hierarchy must come first.
Aristotle was a teleologist; he believed that we are goal seeking and that all behaviors have an aim, an end, or a purpose.
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- Information
- The Psychology of HappinessA Good Human Life, pp. 53 - 66Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009