What is the best kind of friendship? _

HAPPINESS

PT 2.

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Aristotle (b. 384 BCE, tutor of Alexander the Great) on Happiness . . .

The conduct of living Quality of life: how you live it. What is the highest good? In his Nicomachean Ethics

4. Aristotelianism and “The Good Life”

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Aristotle reviews forms of happiness: 1.  [sensory pleasure], 2.  the political, and thirdly 3.  the contemplative life. To judge from the lives that men lead, most men . . .

seem (not without some ground) to identify the good, or happiness, with pleasure; which is the reason why they love the life of enjoyment.

Now the mass of mankind are evidently quite slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts, but . . . many of those in high places share the tastes of Sardanapalus.

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Aristotle on Happiness, cont.

2. . . . People of superior refinement and of active disposition identify happiness with honor; for this is, roughly speaking, the end of the political life. But it seems too superficial . . ., since it depends on those who bestow honor rather than on him who receives it, but the good we divine to be is something proper to a man and not easily taken from him.

HAPPINESS

PART 2 PPT

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Groundwork: For Aristotle everything in the world has its own unique function. The function of a knife is simply to cut, the function of a horse would be to run swiftly and to carry a rider, and so on. Various parts of the body also have their own function: that of the eye, for example, is to see.

Aristotle’s argument

à But what is the function of a human being?

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Aristotle: . . . we state the function of man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul implying a rational principle [reason], and the function of a good man is to be the good and noble performance of these [rational actions], and if any action is well performed when it is performed in accordance with the appropriate excellence: if this is the case, human good turns out to be: an activity of soul in accordance with virtue (arête) excellence

The Good Life: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

For the ancients, virtue = Wisdom. Virtue in General for the Greeks = a mean between two extremes — an excess and a defect — with respect to a particular action or emotion. Aristotle valued the Individual mean over the mathematical mean (average).

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What is the best kind of friendship? __________________________ __________________________

A friend is one who: ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________

A big part of happiness is Friendship

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Aristotle in a modern context Anne Frank 1929-1945. “I suddenly realized that we have

had a great, great many compensations. I mean inward compensations.”

Viktor Frankl 1905 – 1997. Author of Man’s Search for Meaning, ��� Developer of existential ��� psychology. Holocaust survivor.

“The size of human suffering is absolutely relative . . .”

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Edward Hopper. Nighthawks. 1942. Portrayed longing , loneliness

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Some institutions and individuals who have made efforts to increase

the happiness ��� of others . . . .

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Federal Government during 1930s: WPA: Works Projects Administration AMERICA – LAND OF ART PATRONAGE

Art patronage, which has developed since 1933, has made over the artistic landscape of America. The Crash of 1929 worsened the fate of American artists, who already had difficulties making themselves known in a country where work comes before art and leisure-time activities. Painters have long been part of the lot of poor people. They are all victims of the Crash, lengthening the waiting lines in soup kitchens. The largest part of the help, by far, comes from the federal government. It was President Franklin D. Roosevelt who decided last year to put an end to artistic poverty by introducing a government program of aid to the most deprived artists. This action program, attached to the Works Project Administration (WPA), includes the distribution of regularly scheduled subsidies and purchase orders for artists.

Written by Holger Cahill, head of the WPA, 1936.

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WPA example: Coit Tower murals, 1933. San Francisco

http://www.coittower.org/artists/artists_intro.html

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Martin Luther King, 1929-1968. (American minister, civil rights activist)

M.L. King Memorial, Yerba Buena Gardens, SF

“….when we let it ring from every village, and every hamlet, from every state and every city , we will be able to speed up the day when all of God’s children…will be able to join hands and sing in the words of that old Negro spiritual, ‘free at last! free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!’”

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