|
Faramir -> RE: Is it all about "being happy" (11/1/2005 6:49:55 AM)
|
Ok, this is a pretty deep question - some of the greatest, most cogent minds in human history have asked what is our end?
I'm drawn very strongly to Aristotle, and I find his articulation of eudaimonia very compelling. Aristotle thinks that "the good," eudaimonia , is a priori what we seek, and so he agress with those here who say that we should be "happy." He goes into great detail about what it means to be "happy" however: to pursue aretē and fully realize yourself as a wise, knowledgeable, virtuous person who made that virtue a practice of habit. If I could brutally summarize, being "happy"" means being "good" in a very broad and comprehensive sense.
I respond to that - the understanding that excellence is excellent, that good is good, that right is right, has always resonated with me. I've taught my children about aretē since they were breeched, although they as yet see it mainly in atheletic and scholastic effort. The rest will come.
But for all my natural inclination towards Aristotle, I see something beyond what he has to say (perhaps it is implied, but not considered); perhaps in a different continuum.
I find Buber's articulation of relationships as the sole reality highly resonant as well. Knowing, I to Thou, seems to be our highest purpose - perhaps the fullest portion of eudaimonia is in knowing I-Thou. Nothing else matters, nothing esle is real, save the relationships we have. Reeds bent, feathers in the wind: everything we find calling us to be of the world. Wilbur understood this. From Love Calls Us to the Things of This World:
quote:
Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world's hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,
``Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult balance.''
It is our fellow spirits in this world that must call us back to it.
So for me, yes, happiness is "the point of this lifestyle." The question is: what does this happiness consist of? Like Buber, like Wilbur, like Jesus, I think it is knowing, I-Thou. More intimacy, more closeness, more love and unity.
This is eudaimonia.
|
|
|
|
