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The Good Life

In: Philosophy and Psychology

Submitted By eayala
Words 525
Pages 3
Hedonism Vs. Desire Satisfaction Theory Living the “good life” to many that means having lots of money, nice cars and dating beautiful women. However, to philosophers it isn’t that easy, to them living the good life has to do with either the theory of hedonism or desire satisfaction. Hedonism simply means that the only intrinsic good is pleasure and the only intrinsic bad is pain. Desire satisfaction theory is the theory that life is well when our desires our filled and bad when they are not. Both hedonism and desire satisfaction theory have their strengths and weaknesses. Hedonism and desire satisfaction theory are both vague enough to have many different models of the “good life” and they both allow personal authority. Another strength is that hedonism follows common sense, as for the desire satisfaction theory, it avoids objective values therefore he values are always relative to oneself. Now it wouldn’t be philosophy if both these theories didn’t have arguments against them. Although they both sound simple and perfect they have their weaknesses. For hedonism the first argument that could be made against it is that pleasure isn’t the only good in the world. For example someone who is working out might not enjoy the pain during the workout but exercise is good for everyone. A second argument weakness would be that because hedonists don’t let bad news affect them they wouldn’t have motivation to get better because they don’t let bad news bother them. For DST one of the weaknesses is that not everything that we desire is good for us. Sometimes eating that extra piece of pie can add up and cause an unhealthy rise in blood pleasure. A second argument would be that there are something’s that are very good for us yet we don’t desire. Take vaccinations for example, no one has a desire to get a vaccination but we all still need them and get them because they are good for us. But, practicing DST would mean that one would stay away from vaccines. Desire satisfaction and hedonism both have something for everyone but I think that there’s more to the “good life”. It can’t just be about pleasure or fulfilling desires that one has, living the good life has to be unique to each individual and their life. First of all in my mind living the good life means getting away from materialist things. Yes it is nice to have the latest devices and the newest gadgets, but we should instead give that forward. Once we get away from spending our lives pursuing new toys to use only to let our lives pass us by. Instead we should look forward to creating memories with friends and family. Memories that last forever, memories that just like an iphone keep getting better year after year but these last forever. The good life should be about companionship. Everyone should have someone or something that they can go to when times get tough, have that be a significant other or a toy. Companionship is important and while some might prefer to be alone it is always nice to have that sense of companionship.

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