Necessities, Jean Kazez PDF

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“Necessities,” Jean Kazez After reading the excerpt, it seems like Kazez is arguing that the necessities for living a good life are happiness, morality, autonomy, self-expression, and progress. These necessities have to contribute some sort of “value” to one’s life and the absence of one of these necessities will contribute to not living well. Off the bat she explains that happiness is a required essential to a good life and that “a person without happiness at all is unconscious, or continually miserable.” However, happiness does not solve all of our problems, and it doesn’t magically make our lives better. She emphasizes that we need some control over our lives—or autonomy. Autonomy positively correlates with happiness—the less control we have the more unhappy we are and vice-versa. She uses Caroline—a mother with a disabled daughter who is unable to find a job that suits her life circumstances. The next necessity she covers is self-expression; while we seek happiness and control over our lives, we also desire or require a sense of unity and sanity. She mentions that the Self and happiness do not always go together. Finally, she is able to link together morality and progress together. A higher moral compass will result in more moderate progression and we will continue to seek higher goals. I was unable to comprehend her correlation between depression treatment and choosing happiness. I would think that choosing to better yourself would be another avenue to make yourself happy, versus the case that chooses ourselves can ultimately make us unhappy....