How does the book "Mindsight" explain the happiness one can Coursework

How does the book "Mindsight" explain the happiness one can acquire that is listed in the book "Happiness Hypothesis" - Coursework Example 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 f ormulation 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 pl easant or