Andrea O'Rourke
ENG 3080 – Dr. Pullman
The More One Has, the Better One Feels?
I. Aristotle’s definition of happiness and its parts
Aristotle gives a mathematical type of definition of happiness. This definition, or
formula, could also be seen as a collector’s dream. The more one collects of certain elements, the
closer one is to the ultimate goal of happiness. "Let happiness, then, be virtuous welfare, or selfsufficiency in life or the pleasantness of secure life or material and physical well-being
accompanied by the capacity to safeguard or procure the same." (Lawson 87), says Aristotle in
The Art of Rhetoric.
Aristotle initially declares that happiness is the ultimate goal for every single human
being. Furthermore, he says that every action of every individual could be seen as some kind of
pursuit of happiness or an attempt to amplify the happiness that had already been attained. Going
by this definition, there are four basic parts that constitute happiness, namely, virtue, selfsufficiency, secure life, physical well being and the capacity to protect and gain these. In further
discussion of this topic, Aristotle breaks the notion of happiness into two basic elements. He
acknowledges the internal and external elements. Internal advantages concern the soul, while
external advantages concern the physical body. Detailed analysis of the two leads Aristotle to list
the minute elements that are needed for attaining happiness.
Aristotle states, "Gentle birth, a vide circle of friends, a virtuous circle of friends, wealth,
creditable offspring, extensive offspring and a comfortable old age; also the physical virtues (e.g.
health, beauty, strength, size and competitive prowess), reputation, status, good luck and virtue
(or also its elements, prudence, courage, justice and moderation). (Lawson 87) He sees them as
check marks on a ‘to-do’ list for a person in search of happiness. Even though Aristotle initially
notes that there is an internal and an external side to the happiness, the list mainly applies to the
elements that would have to do with the body, the external elements. This becomes clearer with
further analysis of each element.

Good birth is a status symbol. Having distinguished ancestors on both of the parent’s side
of the family establishes status. The ancestors could be special by having been wealthy,
virtuous or acquired some other form of desirable material or characteristic.

Creditable and extensive offspring, according to Aristotle, contributes to happiness. He
states that in private, and in public, one must display these. Creditability is measured by
size, beauty, strength, competitive capacity, restraint and courage in male children.
Daughters are credible by having beauty, certain physical proportion, and dignified
energy. A person with few children who do not posses the qualities listed most probably
would not feel very happy in their life.

The next element discussed is wealth. Wealth in Aristotle’s time was not only measured
by counting the money and land one possesses, but also by the furniture, slaves, and
cattle. By having all of these, one establishes a secure life. The more independent one is
the better. It is also important to notice that Aristotle emphasizes that it is not only
necessary to have the riches, but also to consume them. The purpose of wealth lies not
only in accumulation, but also in the consumption of it. The implication is that if an
individual possessed a lot of wealth but simply hung onto it living simply and not using
it, then that person would not be happy.

Good reputation brings happiness, Aristotle states. One can have good reputation if he or
she possesses the things that people want. It could be concluded therefore that this is
something, which is not only sought after but also difficult enough, or rare enough, to
obtain. In addition, Aristotle points out that a person could be a serious figure if he has
good reputation. However, there is no definition of what a serious figure is.

Another element of happiness is honor. There are several things that provoke honor.
These are, "sacrifices, memorials both in verse and without meter, rewards, sanctuaries,
precedence, tombs, statues, public maintenance, barbarian practices, such as genuflection
and standing back, and gifts, which are valued by all recipients." (89) Many of these can
happen to a person after death.

Further development of the notion of happiness brings up the idea of physical health.
Aristotle explains in detail what being in good health means according to specific age
groups. Since he is talking to a male audience, he emphasizes strength both in terms of
physical force and in terms of simple manipulation (and it appears as though Aristotle
was not opposed to using physical strength when trying to convince someone of the
merits of an idea). However, he does not specify the age groups by the exact years of age.

Having pleasant old age makes a person happy, Aristotle would argue. Good old age
includes pretty much staying in fit physical shape and having luck in avoiding
discomfort. Aristotle does not seem to view people as creators of their future. He does not
give any advice on healthy diets or lifestyles, for example, that a good diet would help a
person stay healthy when old age arrives. Good luck is all that Aristotle states is
necessary.

Many respectable friends that act for one’s interest makes one happy. A definition of
friendship here could almost be replaced with the phrase "a person who comes in handy
when in need".

Again Aristotle emphasizes the role of luck in a person’s life. As he says, without luck,
there is no recipe for obtaining certain things. There are aspects of our lives that we
cannot control, and Aristotle attributes these to luck.

The last element of happiness is virtue. He emphasizes its great importance, but does not
elaborate on it in this chapter.
II. How does Aristotle connect happiness to deliberative rhetoric?
Aristotle uses the idea of happiness by stating that because people think certain things
make them happy, they have this inborn inclination to act towards producing more of those
things. His goal is not to persuade people into thinking that whatever he is talking about is true.
Aristotle discusses rhetorical methodology in detail and takes a unique approach by
acknowledging the role of happiness in the rhetoric in the political arena. He does not believe
that it is absolutely necessary to have a great amount of background knowledge about the topic
either (although it would come in handy, he says). And he says this, because he firmly believes
that people base their opinions and conclusions on an idea that is much simpler than any brain
storming or intellectual mastery. Every single person who makes public policy decisions,
Aristotle says, is either trying to become happy (or happier), or is trying to avoid being unhappy.
He states, "exhortations and dissuasions are concerned with happiness and things conducive to it
and contrary to it". If this is the basic psychology of human behavior and patterns of thinking,
than there is no need to go into the realms outside the basic message of ‘if you accept what I am
saying to you, this will make you happy’. Aristotle believes people act in such a simple manner
throughout their lives and through an endless spectrum of situations. He usually talks to an
audience that has the power to either do something or to make decisions, politicians; usually the
setting is a political arena, and the discussion is about something that needs to be done in the
future. Talks about past events are of no interest to him because he prefers only to use his powers
of persuasion on issues that have a direct effect on his immediate life. He is concerned about
influencing the future.
III. To what extent do I think Aristotle’s analysis holds and how would I modify it?
Aristotle offers a general recipe for being happy. He does so not for the sake of defining
happiness, but in fact to give guidelines on how to possibly motivate people who are about to
make a public decision. Motivating such an important group of people in a positive way such as
inspiring them to bring their decisions based on a humanly instinctive desire to be happy is what
Aristotle offers. Certainly there are things that large majority of people value as desirable.
However, no such definition could be universally applied, especially if this definition were to be
applied to today’s world. Aristotle’s view applies mainly to his city-state and especially to his
political audience. Consequently, Aristotle dwells on the civic role of a person rather than a
person who is a private individual and thus has a life separate from his obligations to the country.
By doing this he hardly gives any attention to women, and slaves because they are not important
factors in the political life of that day. Still, he does so because of the political circumstances.
Women and slaves were not the ones making the decisions anyway. Trying to apply Aristotle’s
definition of happiness and its parts to the numerous different cultures that lived through time
and to those that are still alive today would result in a futile endeavor. Political systems have
changed and with them also the people in power. If people were to apply Aristotle’s idea of
motivation by happiness today, this would be more complicated since there are a lot more
different and diverse groups of people that play large roles in the public decision making process.
Simply said, there is no universal standard for what makes a given group of people happy. The
diversity and the complexity of today’s society and its democracy would make it quite
challenging to apply the set of guidelines Aristotle offers. There would be too many exceptions
to the guidelines. For example, some people enjoy feeling pain and being hurt physically. Even
though these people form a minority, they need to be recognized because there are simply too
many of these little groups of people that go by a set of standards that do not conform to their
cultures view of happiness or what is valuable. Besides, there are simply too many different
cultures with their own set of codes and values, which make it even more difficult to construct a
definition of happiness that can be applied universally. And often, many of the groups, no matter
how much they would differ from the “main culture,” would play a part in the public policy
decision making process. So, the challenge would be to incorporate the different set of values
each group would treasure so to influence political decisions.
Going through each of the elements, it is possible to evaluate what Aristotle believes.

Good birth definitely brings a lot of pluses to someone’s life. Just by being born into a
prestigious wealthy family, automatically brings money, opportunity, financial security,
and status to a person. However, this may lead to the development of inability to work in
difficult situations. A person may get used to thinking how easy life is, and finds it
difficult to overcome obstacles simply because he or she is not used to dealing with them.

Creditable offspring is not clearly defined; however, most people would agree that ‘good’
children bring happiness to someone’s life. Happiness derived from extensive offspring
does not apply to our time any more. Having more children will mean needing to have a
lot more money to support them and this often leads to misery. Overall, people today are
more concerned about providing their children with a high quality of life and hence more
security.

Wealth is the common denominator of all cultures during all ages, as something that is
greatly valued and desired. However, it is not clear if a person feels greater happiness, or
simply greater security with having an abundance of wealth. Furthermore, Aristotle does
not clearly define wealth. Nor does he say security is one of the elements of happiness,
therefore nullifying the argument one might make that security itself leads to happiness,
and one would therefore have both security and happiness. It is also very easy to slip into
the materialistic conclusion that the more money one has, the happier one gets to be. The
opposite is also possible and antidotal evidence of this is abundantly available throughout
history. The large number of suicides, broken and miserable marriages, drug and
alcoholic abuse that we witness among the wealthy would suggest that wealth is indeed
no guarantor of happiness.

People value good reputation. In today’s society, good reputation no longer holds the
status it once did. It has been replaced with fame and celebrity. Indeed we see many
examples of famous people who are honored by others despite very disreputable
reputations. Furthermore infamy and disputability are often the very things that give our
present day celebrities their great status.

Aristotle depicts ways to ‘read’ whether someone is honorable. For instance, he mentions
tombs, statues, and sanctuaries. Most of these again would not apply today, but even if
they did, most people would need to wait for these until after they die!

Health is also a timeless factor and as such is still valued today. Strength, however, is
greatly exaggerated. Nowadays people’s lives do not depend so much on their physical
strength.

A good old age has always been something that has been greatly valued.

Aristotle gives a somewhat calculated definition of friendship. Based on that definition
that a friend is a person that performs "for the sake of other what he deems to be in the
other’s interest", it would be more ‘profitable to have more professional friendships
rather than personal. The notion of intimacy and understanding is not included in his
definition.

Good luck is a basic ingredient to the recipe of happiness. Some people may refer to it as
karma, and some as mercy; however labeled it is a necessity in having a happy life.

Virtue is another element without which it would be difficult to apprehend a happy life. It
is unclear whether Aristotle would include spirituality under the notion of virtue.
Spirituality is greatly undermined in this text and it is possible that this is so because of
the political audience that Aristotle is referring to.
Aristotle’s audience might have got in his way to further elaborate on the importance of the
emotional and spiritual realm of happiness. The emotional world, including love and family, are
not mentioned in this text. Spirituality and religion also are not mentioned, even though religion
did play a major role at the time of Aristotle.
IV. Ban Junk Food From GSU – a deliberative argument
a. The Audience
The audience consists of three groups, namely, the students, the teachers and the rest of
the faculty members, and the school administrators. School administrators would be opposed to
my proposition because the University generates a great amount of money through the sales of
snacks. The delivery of the speech will mostly be concerned about them because they are the
ultimate decision-makers. However, the same issue of money will be used to gain their approval
– they need to be convinced that plenty of money can be gathered through the sales of
alternative, more natural foods.
Students may not be thrilled with the idea of banning of junk foods but I intend to make
them aware of the advantages of normal eating over the risks of junk food eating. Being a
younger population, students will be more inclined to adopting idealistic ideas and will be more
open minded and flexible.
Teachers are the group that stands in between the students and the administrators. They
are often seen as the wise ones of society; however, recently teachers started assimilating into the
school systems in the same manners as students. They started talking, dressing, and sometimes
behaving very much like their students. And, they also eat the same junk food. So, all the
criticism that relates to students suffering from bad diets will also indirectly apply to teachers as
well. But, if I address them in a traditional role of responsible ‘future makers’, then the chances
are a lot higher that they will listen to me. In other words, I will ‘play on their sense of honor and
responsibility’.
b) The speech
Imagine a young person diagnosed with obesity. Her life is already deprived of much of
its good quality simply because obesity cuts the ability of the body, and the intellect as well, to
act and perform many of the acts a healthy person takes for granted. Inability to walk briskly,
and to run is just the first negative effects of obesity. Lack of physical activity, multiplied by the
intake of an unhealthy diet, greatly diminishes the amount of oxygen that the body, and
consequently the brain, receives. This has got tremendous, and alarming consequences, on the
mental and physical performance of that person. Even a brief encounter with some of the people
who suffer from this unfortunate condition reveals a great amount of dissatisfaction and pain that
they experience. Many of these people would certainly pay to feel healthy and fit, if only money
could buy that.
To acknowledge this disturbing reality may bring people to the plane of wisdom, the
seldom-undervalued friend of virtue and an element of happiness. It is when a person is well
informed and ‘in touch with reality’ that he or she can make rational decisions that would be
beneficial to the population at large. The fact is that healthy people are generally happy people,
and the reverse is rarely true. Disease is generally a sign of misery or weakness. It is an alarming
situation. Nowadays this state of alarm has grown into a national crisis. The fact is that this
modern phenomenon called obesity has reached epidemic levels in the United States. Moreover,
obesity rates among teens have increased three fold in the past twenty years. Even though there
are several factors contributing to obesity, one that is mostly pronounced is the constant
consumption of junk food. To illustrate the situation, lets us pretend we are in front of a
classroom in a high school in California. There are 100 students in the classroom. Thirty students
out of that hundred are overweight; that means one out of three. Seventy-seven out of those
hundred students are out of shape. Ninety-eight out of a hundred student’s diets fall short of
national nutritional standard. That means that out of those hundred students, only two of them
meet the minimum national nutritional requirement.
The students at the GSU, the faculty members, and the school administrators need to
become aware that obesity is a public health problem. Promotion of junk food or mere inertia to
do something about the problem will only deepen this wound of the society at its most vulnerable
point - the youth. Remember the tendency of educators to make prophetic statements about the
educated youth who will turn the world into a much better place to live in. Well, this generation
of youth is at risk, and the future does not look so bright. The education system and the schools
are promoting the youth’s gradual decay. An industry study found that nationwide schools get $
750 million per year from companies that sell snacks and soda drinks. As much as wealth is
valued, and as much as school’s budgets depend greatly on the sale of the junk food, right now
student’s health is being sold for a bargain price. Schools are in illusion if they believe that the
money they receive from vending machines will benefit the school and the students. The
opposite is the case; students are getting severely affected by the lack of food choice, and the
schools have the power to change the disturbing reality.
It is obvious that students, and people that work in schools, are being bargained for their
health. We should not discuss economics of our student’s, our children’s, or our own health.
Moreover, schools should not rely on students to subsidize their own educators, one could say.
However, the fact is that schools, as GSU does, do depend on their income, which benefits
greatly from the sales from the vending machines. There is a solution that would satisfy both the
hungry students (and when I say hungry, I also mean nutritionally), and the hungry school
budget. Students will buy food when they are hungry, but right now they do not have much of a
choice but to walk up to a vending machine and get a candy bar or soda drink. If there were
places through out campus that would sell natural juices, milk, fruit, salads, nuts, seeds, and
sandwiches that do not resemble long dead, washed out, nutritionally deprived, bread topped
with a cheap chunk of greasy fried hamburger on it, I am sure those places would also be
profitable.
It is about the message students are receiving, and the message states that junk is OK not
only as a snack but also as a part of daily meals. Many students simply end up replacing there
breakfasts and lunches with one trip to a vending machine. So much about this country resembles
opulence; the cars we drive, and the clothes and shoes we wear are not cheap. Unfortunately,
somewhere along the line, people started becoming very cheap about what they eat. Many
students will walk around in a $100 pair of shoes eating a $1 or $2 meal! Obviously, having a
choice of buying nutritional food on the campus would not only contribute to healthier students
but also to the school’s budget.
A similar scenario was unfolding about ten years ago when the tobacco industry lost
billions of dollars because of its complicity in covering up the health problem it’s product had
created. Today, we have a different health problem, which is taking on enormous proportions
amongst young people. Junk food companies are responsible for a certain percentage of this
problem. Companies misrepresent what is in their foods, and also the impact their food has.
However, the newer studies keep reaffirming that it is particularly the high fat, fried, sugar rich,
and unhealthy junk food that shares a lot of the responsibly for obesity and it can also be
carcinogenic. School administrators, students, and teachers need to get together and draw up a
plan for making GSU a place that promotes healthy learning environment. Every one will benefit
if we make it our priority to set up places where healthier food can be purchased all over the
campus. Moreover, we need to ban junk food from GSU.
The future is in our hands. We have the power to change the sad picture of the state of
health among too many of our students and to protect those who are still healthy. This is a noble
cause and it requires some austerity. However, we need to remind ourselves of what is the right
thing to do and what is in every one’s interest.