It is a shared belief among most people that their purpose in life is to find absolute happiness. Ironically, the usual pursuit of happiness leads many to lose the very notions of happiness they intended to find in the first place. The feeling that one does not fully understand who they are or their purpose leads to their inability to find happiness. It is an elusive and futile enterprise.

As a child grows up, their parents constantly reassure them that the career they choose must provide them with financial security. This brings happiness in most adults’ minds. There is a common belief that money is directly correlated with being happy. With enough money, most wishes can come true, but in reality, happiness is a personal state of consciousness. Satisfaction or fulfillment of our material and physical desires won’t bring about happiness.

Why do people think of happiness as the ultimate goal in life? In order to arrive at a conclusion, it is necessary to understand exactly what happiness is and how a person’s identity can have an effect on this. Being happy is something the self has to be ready for, something that is expected and something one believes is deserved.

Death, unemployment and personal tragedy of various forms, not only affect an individual’s mindset, but also makes them question the purpose of their very existence. Further development of personal identity concepts is paramount in order to determine how our cognitive predispositions influence intrapersonal expectations toward life satisfaction. Why it is vital to live a happy life requires authentic and determined personal investment. In this work, I will elaborate on Aristotle and Arthur Schopenhauer's views on personal identity and their respective concepts of happiness.

As Aristotle believed, " Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim, and end of human existence " (Aristotle, 2000). Despite the issues of the physical world, Aristotle presents another challenge to his readers: How shall humans find happiness and fulfillment? He opined that to truly understand happiness, it was necessary to look at the differences between human beings and other earth based life-forms.

Lifeless objects as rocks, dirt, and metal, do not have metaphysical expectations. Their ultimate end, according to Aristotle, is to rest. For non-human animals, their teleological purpose is grounded in seeking pleasure and have the opportunity to reproduce. For humans, Aristotle reasons what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom is the pursuit of fulfillment, in short, happiness. How can you blame a lion for killing if its sole purpose in life is to survive? But the fact that humans have the ability to think abstractly and logically, makes their ultimate end not just pleasure, but rational. Reason allows humans to interpret, comprehend and appreciate the world and the abstract, complex realities which surround material existence. This is the very essence of being human and discovery what it means to be one.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, one of Aristotle’s most famous works, he attempts to answer: What is the ultimate purpose of human existence? He describes the following, an ultimate purpose is that with a final end, an action that is self-sufficient and ultimate, "that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else" (Aristotle, 2000).

Many individuals argue that humans seek pleasure and wealth because these are the foundations for happiness. For the masses, it seems as if money, sex, and traveling were means towards obtaining happiness, but happiness cannot be a goal in itself. Happiness is not something that’s achievable through material means. Aristotle discovers that happiness is simply, the ‘supreme good’ of humanity - and end unto itself. In other words, this means that happiness is the best way to lead our lives and give it meaning.

Aristotle further explains some goals are secondary to other. These lead to other ends, but they are not unto themselves. For example, a teacher’s goal may be to help students learn a trade, which is secondary, to the student’s end of earning a living by producing something as a result of the trade mastered. From another point of view, it can be said that happiness is the pursuit of one’s ultimate purpose. But, how does someone truly know what is their ultimate purpose? So many people believe wealth and power are ultimate ends. In other words, these achievements are not in and of themselves, happiness. Happiness is therefore elusive as these do not bring anything but their own circumstances and do not extend beyond what they are - means of status.

Arthur Schopenhauer, a German philosopher, takes a lead in explaining the ideas of the identity of the self. In his booklet, The Wisdom of Life, he explains that there are three constituents that determine human happiness: "What a man is, what a man has, and how a man stands in the estimation of others." In reality, these are not only elements that decide happiness, but are inquiries of personal identity.

Schopenhauer mentions that the foremost factor contributing to a man's well-being is his inner constitution (the first element). The outer world can influence an individual only so far as the person brings these into their life, becoming a satisfaction or a dissatisfaction emerging from the result of a person's sensations, desires, and thoughts. Someone's environment will be shaped depending on how the individual will perceive it to be, thus being different for each one individually. Moreover, this inner constituent will determine if one will satisfy their ultimate goal.

The concept of personal identity raises philosophical questions such as: What am I? What am I here for? Personal identity establishes the conditions for defining personhood. For example, if a person is convinced that they are a guitar player, then loving music could be part of their identity. These features can change over time depending on the life a person experiences and what they value over time.

Schopenhauer argues questions of existence suggesting we need to know life is suffering. In comprehending this, peace is within grasp as long as one also lets go of the attachments which cause pain in the first place. This Buddhist principle, first brought into the West by Schopenhauer’s work, is in stark contrast to the opinions held by most non-Buddhists and most westerners. It can be also said that the it is also contrary to Aristotle use of ends, as the ultimate purpose is to find happiness, to assume it. Schopenhauer doesn’t guarantee happiness, he encourages the pursuit of suffering as an inextricable part of becoming a human being. Whether one finds happiness or not, isn’t a question of Reason or of intent. It is just as elusive for the pursuit is also an attachment.

Schopenhauer believes there is little hope in general human terms. If we really want to find hope, we first need to see things on earth as they truly are. He describes how persons who appreciate temporary forms of knowledge produce for themselves suffering and inner dissonance. This leads to disgust, despair and the loss of the will to continue to live made possible by our inner, " will-to-live ." Schopenhauer believed that the will-to-live is what keeps us alive, is what drives us to stay alive (Arthur Schopenhauer, 2004).

The End of the Tour, a 2015 film directed by James Ponsoldt, engages the profound concepts of identity and happiness. The movie revolves around the moment when David Lipsky hears that the novelist David Foster Wallace had committed suicide. He worked for Rolling Stone magazine and interviewed Wallace after the publication of his famous novel Infinite Jest. One of the main ideas that Lipsky reveals about David Foster Wallace is that his main objective was to make people feel less desolate through his writing. Aristotle would agree with this claim.

In a dialogue between the two main characters, the first time Wallace was sharing his feelings with David Lipsky, he said: “Feeling that every action in your life turned out to be false and there was nothing, and you are nothing... and you are so much more than everybody because you can see that it is a delusion, and you are so much worse because you can’t function, that’s really horrible.” When analyzing the writer at this point in the movie from Schopenhauer’s perspective, Wallace is starting to understand that there is no hope. Schopenhauer stated that humans are being punished for the crime of being born, therefore, the purpose of life is to suffer. It is critical to notice that at this point in the movie, David Foster Wallace is negligent to believe that his life has a deeper meaning than just making people feel less alone.

Wallace stated that “the idea that if we could achieve X, Y, and Z, everything would be okay... it’s not that we are not afraid anymore, is that the alternative is so awful, that you are invited to think what could be so awful that leaping to your death seems like an escape from it...” Schopenhauer was a believer that there were only three ways of escaping the anticipated suffering: aesthetic contemplation, ascetic conduct, and death. He supported the idea of death as an escape from everything, as the way to save the self. What could be so bad about the non-existence after death if it would just be the same as the non-existence before we were born?

Dying would just be the final return to that unconscious infinite eternity. Wallace mentions that living in those conditions is much worse than any physical injury, that it is worse than a spiritual crisis. The feeling of loneliness was a force so strong, pushing him down, that he could not bear it anymore. Wallace started to give up and was denying the will-to-live. In Schopenhauer's philosophy, “denial of the will is the only way to prevent suffering, but he also tells us that when the will is denied, the world becomes absolutely nothing, without actually being dead” (Hannan, Barbara, 2009). As Schopenhauer wrote: " to those in whom the will has turned and denied itself, this very real world of ours, with all its Suns and Milky Ways, is – nothing " (Russell, Bertrand, p. 785).

The truth about Schopenhauer philosophy is that he believes that happiness does not exist. All we can do is follow certain rules to avoid suffering, which will give us to some degree the idea of being happy. He stated “Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure, are by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral and subject to chance.” It is essential that we as human beings, free ourselves from care and opinions from others other than one’s self. David Foster Wallace failed to identify these rules to follow, meaning, suffering won the battle against self-sufficiency.

In conclusion, the ideas shown in the movie The End of the Tour are supported by the philosophical observation of happiness and personal identity presented by Aristotle and Arthur Schopenhauer. The thought that happiness is, in fact, all humans’ ultimate purpose. Not in the sense of living a good life, but rather being in that state of mind. At the same time, the idea of never being happy, but just entertaining an illusion that allows us to pursue the will-to-live, is genuinely interesting to me. Nevertheless, I wonder if we really cannot be happy. What if that allusion becomes an actuality? What if I am convinced that I am truly happy and it becomes a part of my personal identity? Will I then be happy? I conclude that personal identity does not only influence ultimate happiness but dictates whether or not we are genuinely happy.

References:

1. Russell, Bertrand. A History of Western Philosophy, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1948, p. 785.
2. Arthur Schopenhauer, THE WISDOM OF LIFE , Translated By T. Bailey Saunders. Dover Publications; Dover Ed edition. March 8, 2004
3. Hannan, Barbara. The Riddle of the World. A Reconsideration of Schopenhauer's Philosophy. Oxford University Press. 2009
4. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics (Second Edition). Translated by Terence Irwin. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. March 10, 2000.
5. The End of the Tour. Directed by James Ponsoldt, performances by Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg , 2015