Question

Purpose: Compare and contrast hedonic and euadaimonic views of happiness.

If you had to choose between being healthy (mentally & physically) or happy, which would you choose and why? What do you believe is the relationship between health and happiness? Does one cause the other? Is one the foundation for the other? What would be examples of behaviors that increase health, but decrease happiness and behaviors that increase happiness, but decrease health? Can you be healthy and unhappy? Happy and unhealthy?

Answer 1

One of the most important things that would make people happy is when they are healthy because healthy people would be able to work and live with people thus could create happiness. This would mean that people who are not healthy would ultimately lose their life chances and it would decrease one’s happiness. However, happiness has a great deal of influence on one’s health because unhappy people would become more stressed which would lead them to become unhealthy. Thus, there is a link between health and happiness. This would mean that one could be happy but unhealthy because they would be mentally strong and they would maintain a positive attitude and worldview. On the other hand, one could be healthy but still unhappy because there are lots of other variables such as, wealth, job, relationship etc. that would impact one’s happiness. When people engage in healthy behaviours such as exercise which requires physical pain, they may not be able to be happy and when they engage in happy events such as drinking alcohol, people may become unhealthy. Nevertheless, they two are interlinked and would impact each other.

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