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Happiness and the finiteness of the human being

Philosophy: What for? FIL 2001............

Teacher: Miguel González Vallejos......
Student: María Ignacia Aguilar Hevia
Date: June 28, 2022................
 1. Introduction

This paper seeks to analyze the vision of what "happiness" is according to different
philosophical currents of the West, such as Aristotelian philosophy or John Mill's
utilitarianism, among others, as well as the concept of the death of the human being under
the points of view of Martin Heidegger, Xavier Zubiri and Manuel Cornejo. Adding to this
the perspective of death and the awareness of this, presented by the films "My life without
me" and "Beyond dreams" as extra-philosophical support materials to the personal
reflection on "What is death?", its relationship with happiness and the reasons behind the
existence of the human being; taking into account that this reflection will be affected by
current events lived during the XXI century, characterized by constant exposure to
information due to globalization and the experience of the pandemic of COVID-19. And
with this previous review we will proceed to defend the following thesis: "happiness is a
necessary element for man to understand his own finitude as what gives purpose to his
existence", dealing with one of the oldest questions of philosophy "What is the meaning of
human existence?" in a society with a tired mentality that when thinking about this question
tends to absurdity, so "happiness" becomes crucial at the time of accepting death as the fact
that gives a purpose to the individual existence of each person without falling into
meaninglessness.

2. Development

To begin with it is necessary to know what is considered "happiness", for this we will
review the definition given by different philosophers. According to Aristotle happiness is
the ultimate end of life that will never be occupied as a means to other ends since it is
always sought for its own sake, also called eudainomy; although most people agree that this
is the ultimate end of man, there is no agreement on what this element is concretely, leaving
happiness as the exercise of activities that lead to a full life and achieved according to the
standards of each person. Aristotle continues his reflection by saying that happiness can
only be fully achieved by the
contemplation, but this only considers the philosopher as the person capable of attaining
happiness, which contradicts itself because not all human beings proceed to philosophize in
order to attain the well-achieved life 1 . On the other hand, the current of utilitarianism
focuses on happiness as something quantifiable, John Stuart Mill defines happiness as
pleasure and the absence of pain without going beyond the fact that the happiness of people
is equivalent2 . As a complement to this last perspective, we also find that according to
Thomas Hobbes happiness is the perseverance and attainment of the things that man desires
during his life thanks to the sensations3 . Taking into consideration these three points of
view, in today's society happiness can be considered as the ultimate goal of human beings
to achieve a good life, which they reach through the activities that provide satisfaction in
both the long and short term, within the rules of society, and these activities can be different
or the same for each individual.

With this we give way to the concept of the "death" of oneself, on the one hand, we
have the vision of Socrates who is not afraid of death since he does not know what it
consists of, but proposes two theories, the first being something similar to being deeply
asleep forever and the second theory a transit to another place where those who have
already lost their life are found4 . On the other hand we have Manuel Cornejo who presents
the more religious vision of Xavier Zubiri, who speaks about the duality of the human
being with a body (sensitive and mortal) and a soul (immortal, closer to the divine) and
how death only puts an end to the transit of man in the physical reality of the body 5 ; while
Heidegger treats death together with the temporality of people and an individual possibility
that they have of "being", a proof of one's own existence 6 . Thanks to these perspectives on
death, it is possible to understand different visions that people in society may have of it,
being as varied as those of these philosophers, ranging from the total loss of consciousness
and the "end" of existence to the passage to another place that may be conditioned by the
beliefs (in some cases religious) of the people.

7. Aguilar Gatica, R. (2022). Alejandro Vigo, Aristotle. Una introducción. Pp. 190-199.
8. Rachels, J.(2010) Justice (4th ed.) Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
9. Hobbes, T. (1989). Leviathan; The matter form and power of an ecclesiastical and civil state.
10. Aristophanes and Plato (1984). Apology of Socrates. Crito. The clouds. Buenos Aires, Argentina:
Hyspamerica
11. Cornejo, M (2019) The problem of death in Xabier Zubiri.
12. Rivara, Greta (2010). Appropriation of finitude: Heidegger and being for death.
 Moving on to the argumentation of the thesis, we currently live in a society in which
death, in general, is taken as a taboo subject. However, in recent years, it has been affected
by a pandemic that has claimed millions of lives worldwide.
and that thanks to technology has remained so much of the consequences of this,
approaching and internalizing the concept through the media and the fear of contagion and
cause the death of others or themselves, but that has gradually returned to avoid with the
return to the "new normality". People are often afraid of death for different reasons, even
causing them to avoid talking about it, almost trying to forget that the fact that someday we
will die is the only certainty that we as human beings have about our life. It is at this point
where the protagonist of the film "My Life Without Me" comes in, a 23 year old woman
named Ann who learns that she has only a couple of months to live, as she becomes aware
of her mortality and the little time she has left she makes a list of things she must do before
she dies, both for the sake of her family and for her own enjoyment; realizing that she is
going to die she begins to contemplate her own life and the world, noticing how all the
commercial things are there to distract people from death and how because of this she has
never thought about doing the things that would bring her satisfaction in order to achieve
the life she desires and be happy. During the course of this film, Ann manages to fulfill
most of her wishes before she dies, reaching part of the happiness she wanted to feel in her
life. With this audiovisual material it is evident the importance of becoming aware of one's
own death, since like the protagonist one could live in a constant lethargy, living for the
simple fact of being alive at the moment and falling into a crisis when realizing that all the
actions performed during life have no real meaning, which changes at the moment when
Ann begins to live based on the things that cause her happiness, becoming able to accept
her own death without fear.

From another perspective, we can see that nowadays when people reflect on their own
life and death, without taking happiness into account, they tend to fall into the absurd or
pessimistic view that man exists to "suffer". It is common for people to see news of
catastrophes, human rights violations and other tragedies and lose sight of the purpose of
being alive if they do not turn to the things that make them happy. As we can see in the film
"Beyond Dreams", the protagonist Chris Nielsen begins the process of accepting his own
death already being deceased, although the film teaches us a very interesting vision about
what is death and the existence of consciousness after this we will focus on the wife of the
protagonist, who after the loss of her husband and the previous death of her children four
years earlier, falls into depression (feeling guilty for the death of her loved ones, unable to
find any way to be happy without them) and ends up taking her own life, being later
rescued from her own "hell" in the afterlife by her reunion with the protagonist and the
happiness he gave to her existence. In this case we can see how a person who cannot
achieve happiness, does not consider himself capable of being happy, and accepts his own
death, ends up thinking that there is no reason to continue with life and it loses all its value,
taking death itself as a solution to meaninglessness.

However, some people might consider that just by consciously seeking happiness, the
human being can consider that he has found his reason to exist, leaving aside death again.
But as mentioned above when dealing with the case of the movie "My Life Without Me",
being distracted by death itself and not becoming aware of it can make man not take the
time to make a personal reflection on what would really make him happy and instead let
himself be carried away by what these distractors present him with as objects that will
make him happy even if only momentarily, especially considering that our current society
is collapsed with social networks that teach objects or ways of life that you must have to be
happy, without taking into consideration the individuality of each person and the
subjectivity that exists when it comes to finding ways to be happy and achieve a good life.

3. Conclusion

To conclude this work, it is important to mention the importance of death as an

inevitable event for every human being that gives value and purpose to existence, however
overwhelming and terrible it may be for some people due to ignorance about what happens
when we die. Despite the prejudices that are held about death in society, thanks to religion
or the same evasion, it is a subject that should be treated more naturally or try to change the
pessimistic perception of this, to one that allows us to see that thanks to the limited time we
have in the world we can appreciate our own existence and that of others. Also
understanding happiness and death as complementary and not contradictory elements, since
by living in a constant search for happiness is that we can stop contemplating death as
something tragic and really focus on our personal purpose. This change of mentality is
necessary in our society and especially for the younger generations who are forced to
constantly face catastrophic scenarios, with an increasingly agonizing optimism and a
diminishing hope and enthusiasm for the future, and see death as an escape from their lives
that are falling into absurdity.

Bibliography:
. Aguilar Gatica, R. (2022). Alejandro Vigo, Aristotle. Una introducción. Santiago de
Chile: IES, 275 pages. Cuadernos De Filosofía, (25), 115-117.

Aristophanes and Plato (1984). Apology of Socrates. Crito. The clouds. Buenos
Aires, Argentina: Hyspamerica

Cornejo, M (2019) The problem of death in Xabier Zubiri.

Hobbes, T. (1989). Leviathan; La materia forma y poder de un estado eclesiastico y

civil (1st. ed.). Madrid: ALIANZA.

Rachels, J.(2010) Justice (4th ed.) Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

Rivara, Greta (2010). Appropriation of finitude: Heidegger and being for death.

Movies:
- My life without me, (2000).
- Beyond Dreams (1998)