The Emotions and Happiness in Haidt, Siegel and Aristotle - Coursework Example

The Emotions and Happiness in Haidt, Siegel and Aristotle Table of Contents Introduction 3 Discussion 4 Works Cited 8 Introduction This paper explores the way s the emotions are tied relationally to happiness, as reflected in the works of Aristotle, Haidt, and Siegel. The paper attempts to answer the second prompt in other words, that seeks how the human emotions relate to happiness from the perspective of those three thinkers as reflected in their books and philosophies. The reference works for this paper are ‘The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom’ by Jonathan Haidt and ‘Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation’ by Daniel Siegel (Haidt; Siegel). There is value first in exploring Aristotle’s ideas on happiness, and the relationship between the emotions and happiness. It is important to note that in reference to Aristotle’s idea of happiness, or what can be summed up in the word eudaimonia, the notion of happiness is not necessarily linked to passing emotions at any given time, but is more associated with the achievement of virtue, a direction or an overarching purpose or sense of meaning to one’s life that can be only gleaned with finality at the end of a life, as a culmination and as an endpoint to be reached (Burton). This happiness is also tied to what Aristotle terms as the mean, or that middle ground between extremes, the achievement of which can be construed as a standard for evaluating the happy or unhappy life. The achievement of the mean is tied to the successful cultivation of virtue, and this life lived in virtue, over a span of a lifetime, is what constitutes happiness. There is moreover the formulation in Aristotle of happiness not as something that is useful for another end, but is something that can be considered as the final and ultimate good, a good in itself, and the end of all of human activities. Therefore, happiness is somewhat also tied to a sense of things being alright, of a positive feeling in a way, that is the real end of all human strivings, from gathering and eating food, to earning money, traveling, establishing a family, taking care of one’s body to be healthy. In this latter formulation there is the sense of the emotions having some value as a kind of inner compass that can guide one and act as a kind of thermostat or inner compass leading towards the achievement of that state of happiness that Aristotle discussed extensively in the Nicomachean ethics. There is a sense of happiness in Aristotle of being an activity, a kind of striving, with the emotions signalling whether the direction of one’s life and the results of the striving are pleasant or unpleasant, emotionally satisfying and pleasant or not. Happiness is tied to moral actuations, and is in evidence in the flowering of such virtues as justice and friendship, in themselves too denoting the presence of pleasant emotions (Kraut; Pursuit of Happiness). Discussion Reading Siegel, on the one hand, discuss ‘Mindsight’, one gets the notion of happiness as the result too of a kind of effort at integration, and of refocusing and rewiring the brain through a kind of ability to reflect on the inner workings of that mind, and how those inner workings, having their foundation in the plastic brain, can be consciously changed and rewired, repurposed and re-sculpted, towards a more positive and holistic, as well as a fresher and more engaging, path. The idea here is that happiness is not something that is easy to come by, because in a way people navigate through life being partly victims by their own past, which shows up in the way past experiences have shaped the way the brain fires and thinks thoughts, and feels emotions, in response to life experiences both mundane and profound. The idea behind mindsight and happiness is that through the power of reflection, and the power of awareness, coupled by an active effort to reshape one’s responses to life and the way one thinks and reacts to outside reality, one can reshape a life’s path to become happier. In other words, in reference to the emotions, when the wiring of the brain is defective and the worldviews are stale and ineffective, so too do people tend to experience more negative emotions, and those emotions further reinforce a negative spiral that leads to a more dysfunctional brain and sense of self. The idea in mindsight is that true, emotions are tied to human cognitive processes and the worldviews and perceptions of people about their place in the world, but through constant effort to become more aware of oneself and of one’s self-destructive response to life, one can repurpose one’s internal psychological and emotional makeup and change the dynamics of one’s emotional and mental response to life in order to experience life in a more positive, and emotionally fulfilling, happier life. Siegel defines happiness therefore not in terms of a set of standards that have independent value and reality outside of the brain and the psyche that experiences those emotions, including happiness. Happiness is something that can be achieved, as an orientation that can be reshaped as one becomes more and more aware of oneself and becomes more and more in tune with an external order that already exists and has always existed, in a way. The emotions in this context can be construed as likewise not having their own intrinsic validity, but are aspects of the self and of one’s ability to self-reflect. Where a sense of self is positive, and constantly being reshaped by deep reflection, one’s emotional makeup can gradually change too to become more and more positive over time. Thus one can see that the emotions relate to happiness in Siegel in this way, that both are subjective gauges that reflect the inner state of reflection and the state of the brain of the person experiencing the emotions. (Siegel; Siegel (b)). For Haidt on the other hand happiness is to be had from the insights into the nature of happiness, consciousness, and the human psyche that can be had from the works of the great thinkers that he distilled in several chapters in his book. In eleven chapters he espouses notions of happiness as having roots in finding balance among extremes and among many competing voices and perspectives; living a life of purpose and meaning, or finding meaning in life as a prerequisite for happiness; acknowledging the human mind’s impulse towards the acknowledgement of the divine in various aspects of life, in having a sense of God or the divine as something external and vital to one’s sense of self; living a life of virtue and of morality, as espoused in the seminal woks of thinkers like Kant and Homer, and as reflected in the deep wisdom from the sacred texts; forging vital relationships with others, romantic, platonic, friendly, familial and others; living by the maxim of the golden rule, or the maxim of reciprocity; reshaping one’s mind through conscious willful acts, such as those employed in cognitive therapy programs; and integrating the conscious and unconscious or automatic aspects of our consciousness in order to achieve a greater sense of self-consistency and wholeness (Haidt; Haidt (b)). One gets a sense in Haidt that happiness too is not a static state, but is associated with conscious effort, living by a set of precepts, engaging the world and being deeply entangled in meaningful relationships with others based on genuine love, of showing concern for others and treating others as one would like to be treated, of reconciling opposites, and of achieving greater clarity of vision about the nature of oneself both conscious and unconscious. When Haidt discusses the way one can consciously shape the way one reacts and thinks in response to life, Haidt touches on a message that finds resonance in Siegel, and there the link between the emotions and happiness is made clear too. In this latter perspective the emotions are not an infallible self-guide, especially where the cognitive processes are defective and the wirings of the brain tend towards negativity and smallness of mind and world perspective. The link between happiness and the emotions is one of harmony when there is an inner prior harmony too. This is the same message for Haidt and Siegel. At the same time, both are saying that the emotions are not infallible, and that in fact one needs to evolve one’s cognitive and self-reflective faculties in order to realize an inner happiness that is naturally accompanied by positive emotions. Finally, integrating these latter insights into the link between the emotions and happiness in the two books with that of Aristotle, one sees that in all three thinkers the emotions are the raw aspects of a wider “mechanism” of cognition and of perception of the external reality, that can be closed in on a negative loop left to its own devices, and needs active intervention through the pursuit of virtues in the case of Aristotle, the application of the wisdom of the ancients in Haidt, and through the conscious application of mindsight in the case of Siegel (Siegel; Haidt (b); Kraut). 1 Works Cited Burton, Neel. “Aristotle on Happiness”. Psychology Today. 28 January 2013. Web. 5 April 2015. Haidt, Jonathan. The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. Basic Books. 2011. Haidt, Jonathan. “Read Chapters- Chapters Summaries”. The Happiness Hypothesis Website. n.d. Web. 5 April 2015. Kraut, Richard. “Aristotle’s Ethics”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2014. Web. 5 April 2015. Pursuit of Happiness. “Aristotle”. The Pursuit of Happiness. 2015. Web. 5 April 2015. Siegel, Daniel. Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation. Bantam. 2010. Siegel, Daniel (b). “What is Mindsight? An Interview with Dr. Dan Siegel”. PsychAlive. 2014. Web. 5 April 2015. 2 Read More