Happiness is pleasure without pain. So, if you live a life without any sort of pain at all, you are living a truly happy life. As defined by Mill. But if you don't experience any sort of pain, how do you really know what makes you happy? Mill also says that morally good action also brings you happiness. But if a good action causes you pain, that is not happiness by his definition. I think of happiness as like a muscle, or a callus. You put it through much pain and it gets stronger. Your sense of happiness is stronger by how much pain you have had throughout your life.
People would not learn some of the important things in life without pain also. The basic trial and error would not be existent because without the pain of failure, no one would learn the basics of life.
According to Mill, the utilitarian's standard for judging an act is based on the happiness of all people. This is true because an act shouldn't be about the individual's happiness, but the happiness of his act onto other people.
I like the example of happiness being a callus. I personally believe that were would be no need for a word such as happiness without understanding the opposite. It isn't logical otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI definetley agree with both you and Larshay. A lot of people will never be able to understand the true meaning of happiness or anything else for that matter without understanding what it feels like to not be happy or to be the opposite of something else
ReplyDelete