1. 1. What is happiness?

    There is a clear paradox in the conquest of happiness: The more men are striving to achieve it, the more it seems to get away from their hands and become a nostalgic term always unsatisfied.

    We can distinguish between the foundation-origin of that feeling and the effect-happiness.

    If a man seeks directly the effect-happiness does not ever get it, because first he has to hope the foundation-origin. For many authors the foundation of happiness is the development of our faculties or personal perfection. It also means to help and serve other people, ensure that others are ok. The effect-happiness (the pleasure and joy) is a subjective consequence of the perfection conquered.

    The foundation of happiness consists in the perfection of the operational faculties when the man gets goods or particular purposes, for example, understand a truth or perform a well done job. The effect-happiness or joy is a consequence of the previous conquest.    For Aristotle, the happiness is not in the ephemeral (the sensitive pleasures, things) but in the "good life" (the honest life according to the virtue). For this author the happiness is to live and act well.

  A) Write a response

   According to the dictionary "utilitarianism" is a modern philosophical doctrine that considers the utility as a moral principle. Likewise, "utility" is what only tends toward what is useful; I mean what produces benefit, comfort, profit or interest. Consequently, everything that we consider a good is because of the utility that it can produce.

    In the civilization of utilitarianism people are considered as things. In this way, the woman can become an object for man, children an obstacle to parents and the family an institution that complicates the freedom of its members. This utilitarian happiness that is looking for freedom without responsibility is the antithesis of love. It does not correspond at all with a vital project to the "good life", to the personal treatment and to the true love.

  B) Write a response

  3. Marital happiness

   The utilitarianism in married life causes shared egoism and the relationship is reduced to a reciprocal use of man and woman. It is a love without any demand, and therefore it is false and without beauty.

    On the contrary, a principle of married life would be: each spouse is more worried about the life of the loved one that the proper life. The spouse forgets himself/herself, pleasures and needs to focus on the other and adapts to him/her, without repair in the effort that it might mean.

  C) Write a response