John Locke's Argument Essay: The Pursuit Of Happiness

A study conducted by San Francisco State University was that money does have a factor on one´s happiness. But what the money is being spent on is not material objects, instead it is experiences that are being bought. One of the experiences that the students at the college purchased was a meal out. Now what a meal out gives a person is a feeling of activity in one's life and having social contracted with someone else, which a material possession would not be able to do. What this experience also provides is a memory which one might never forget because they had such a good time. So the whole phrase ¨money can buy you happiness¨ is partially true in a way but in this way it is completely different, because the happiness is coming from the experience

Socrates, one of the most famous Greek philosophers, believed that one can achieve happiness when he said, ¨By harmonizing our desires we can learn to pacify the mind and achieve a divine-like state of tranquility.¨ What Socrates was trying to say was that if people work together and have similar desires, then achieving the ultimate goal of happiness would be much easier. Trying to achieve a desire may be tough, but having someone there to help makes it less difficult. John Locke, an English Philosopher, would disagree with Socrates since he stated, ¨The necessity of pursuing happiness is the foundation of liberty.¨ Which meant that one did not need all of the desires in life to achieve happiness. Locke believed that having the ability to be free and make decisions for oneself is the best way to have a happy. Simply having family, friends, or someone helping to achieve desires in life is one way of achieving happiness as Socrates said, but also through freedom and choices one makes on their own as John Locke would say. Both are different in aspects, but are examples of how someone can take their own unique path to achieve