Happiness

This week in class we discussed the teleology of nature. The teleology of nature states that everything has a final end or purpose that it is pursuing. Through this meaning we found that the telos, final end or purpose, of a human is eudaimonia. The meaning of eudaimonia is happiness. Aristotle says that happiness is pursued for its own sake, not for the sake of something else. This means that you strive for happiness to be able to get happiness not so that you can get the secondary benefits to happiness. For example doing something courageous makes you feel happy but you should not do the courageous act to just get the reward of being known as courageous. Aristotle believes that if the act that is done for other benefits, then the act is not striving towards the goal of happiness. However, I believe that happiness can be obtained even if there are multiple goals that are trying to be accomplished. For example if a police officer were to see a crime taking place then the police officer would have to step in and be courageous to try and stop the crime from happening. In Aristotle's eyes the act of being courageous to just be courageous would be achieving happiness, but the police officer is not just attempting to stop the crime to be courageous he is also doing it because it is his job to and he gets paid to do it. I believe that even though the police officer has secondary benefits the act will still bring him closer to the final goal of happiness. I believe that the act will be able to bring him closer to happiness because it would be a habit to continuously make courageous acts even though it would have secondary benefits.  So in conclusion I believe that happiness can still be sought after even if there are other benefits involved.