When you think of happiness, you sometimes would think of pleasure. However, not many people think of pain as a relationship to happiness. Yet, both Aristotle and Epicurus have very distinct ways to show the exact relationship between all three feelings that are not quite the same in comparison.
Through both descriptions of the feeling of happiness, I would say that Epicurus has a more plausible view on happiness because he compares it more to wants and needs of human beings.
He shows how we can eliminate some of the things we want to make us happier while not worrying and relying as much on the things that we don’t necessarily need in our lives.
Aristotle compares happiness to many different objects and feelings. When first speaking of happiness as pleasure, Aristotle mentions, “The masses, the coarsest people, see it as pleasure, and so they like the life of enjoyment”. In this passage, Aristotle compares happiness to pleasure as the life of enjoyment.
Although, Aristotle feels that this definition of happiness as the life of enjoyment is not needed in bringing a human being happiness. This is because the idea of happiness as pleasure is valued for itself. With this being said, Aristotle describes happiness as being mostly self-explanatory.
For example, happiness is pursued for its own sake, while everything else is ultimately pursued for its sake. This means that happiness is only pursued for happiness, you, as a human being, will do different things to pursue your own happiness.
Later in Aristotle’s book, he proves that happiness is relatively permanent, unlike pleasure. Aristotle compares this to an example of a horse lover, “For experiencing pleasure is an aspect of the soul, and each person finds pleasure in that in which he is said to be fond, as a horse-lover finds it in a horse…”.
This means that the horse-lover doesn’t find happiness in the horse, they find pleasure in the horse. The things that you like or love, bring you pleasure but not necessarily happiness. Happiness is only related to pleasure, they are not identical. “Happiness, then, is the best, the noblest and the pleasantest thing…”.
Aristotle uses this quote to describe happiness as being a just and heathy action, while pleasure is more of what a human or something wants and reaches for. When talking about pain related to happiness, Aristotle brings in the mean and the habits.
Aristotle found that virtue and happiness go hand in hand; you can’t be virtuous without being happy and vice versus. In Book II, Aristotle mentioned, “Neither virtues nor the vices are feelings, because we are called good or bad on the basis not of our feelings, but of our virtues and vices…”.
Here, Aristotle is saying that the feelings are things from pleasures and pains, yet feelings do not make up virtue. Therefore, feelings do not make up happiness. The mean is the middle of two extremes, you don’t want too much or too little of the mean to be happy, you want just the right amount.
“With respect to pleasures and pains – not all of them, and less so with pains – the mean is temperance, the excess intemperance” (32). It is very hard to hit directly on the mean because, in this case, you don’t know how much pain to feel for what reasons.
At the end of this book, Aristotle mentions, “For we each have different natural tendencies, and we can find out what they are by the pain and pleasure that occur in us”.
To find the mean and to be happy, we will sometimes lean towards excess and sometimes towards deficiency because we would hit the mean by doing more of what makes us comfortable. This applies with pain as well, sometimes we will have more or less pain to meet the mean comfortably and be happy.
Although there would be many counter arguments about the ways that Aristotle would argue for happiness, there are answers to argue against those arguments.
For example, when Aristotle would argue that happiness is a complete activity within itself, which brings ultimate meaning to life and that happiness is only similar to pleasure but not the same and still requires some external goods, I would argue against it based on Epicurus’s argument.
External goods are like wealth and power, but Epicurus argues that those are groundless desires. This is because wealth and power lack direct connections with sensations.
You should eliminate these desires because you don’t necessarily need them to live and to be happy and they don’t give us pleasure even when they are fulfilled. Instead, you should reach for the necessary desires which free us from pain and distress when they are fulfilled.
The desires to reach for are necessary natural desires like shelter, food, and water. Also, Epicurus argues that we can do a lot to gain happiness back when we lose it and that a more pleasurable life would be that of less desires.
This counteracts Aristotle’s argument that happiness is a complete activity within itself because there are many things to do to bring back happiness. Therefore, it is not complete within itself only.
