Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

When in class on Friday, we were talking about the theories of Hobbes’ views of human nature. The thing that absolutely caught my attention when we discussed his philosophies was our quick discussion on Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. When we had talked about this I ended up writing about why I think people help one another out in terms of Hobbes’ idea of psychological egoists. My idea of this is similar to the ideal of the psychological egoist in that we feel like we need to help someone in order to quell our own needs, but the difference in my thoughts is that it is most definitely not a selfish / selfless act situation.

To my understanding, we slingshot each other by doing good acts in order to slowly bring one another closer to the greater good. The great part about this is that even the most simple of “selfless acts” can be put through this test.

As an example, there are two people in the given situation, person “A” and person “B”. If person “A” has fallen on the ground (thus being slightly on the lesser pleasant side of their day) allowing for person “B” to offer a hand up to the fallen one; then person “B” is offering a free ride on the slingshot to happiness. By helping out, person “B” has brought “A” through a very small level of bad and left them better off than they were before, but at the same time leaving themselves back where they had started in terms of happiness. This is just part of the ladder of happiness, and if we can all help one another climb the steep climb that has been presented, then in the end we would all be better off, wouldn’t you agree?