select the philosopher or thinker who has come closest to giving the correct account of human happiness.
- Describe what happiness or the good life is like for their approach. This description should include such things as what is necessary for happiness, what is sufficient (what would be enough), whether it can be achieved alone or only in society (and what kind of society), whether it is accessible to everyone or not, what effort one has to put in, what qualities one needs, etc. You should be as complete and concise as possible. Your account must be supported by citations to primary sources;
- Provide their basic reasoning in favor of this account. This should connect to what they think is essential to human nature or what our most basic drives are, etc. It should be clear why they think this is happiness for beings like ours. This might require you to extrapolate and fill in the thinking and views of the philosopher under consideration;
- Explain, with your own reasoning, why this is the best account of human happiness that we have considered. To do this, you will need to say what the view gets right, what (if anything) it gets wrong, and why you think this is right or wrong. You should provide your own account of what we need for happiness insofar as it matches or diverges from the thinker you have considered. Here you should be attempting to convince a reasonable but skeptical reader to accept this view by appealing to plausible premises and showing how this view follows.Your essay must refer to primary sources and include citations (at minimum author and page number), but should not consist of just a series of long quotations. It should be clear that you have read and understood the material and are able to explain it to a reader. My lectures and slides are not a primary source and may not be cited in your essay; and,
- Lay out any ways in which your reader ought to reform their lives, better to be able to achieve the kind of happiness or good life tht you are endorsing.
