Jeremy Bentham once argued in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789) that “the purpose of life is happiness, that any moral philosophy should be based on achieving ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number’, and that degrees of happiness could be determined through a ‘felicific calculus’”. Some days, people forget that life should be about succeeding in creating the most jovial, buoyant life possible. As notoriously stated by the United States Declaration of Independence, one of a person’s unalienable rights is the pursuit of happiness. These days, people are caught up on pursuing the most lucrative jobs. Bentham really shows that education should be “devoted to useful knowledge rather than learning for its own sake” (Bentham {1789} 1982: 1-41). In making this comment, Bentham urges us to pursue what we want to pursue, what we actually would enjoy spending the rest of our lives pursuing.
In my Theatre class, we studied Euripides’ Medea. In the class not only did we talk about Medea, but also Euripides, known as the father of melodrama. As my teacher discussed how Euripides was criticized for using vulgar language and dealing with subjects that question traditional values, I couldn’t help but feel joy at connecting this to Bacchae, also written by Euripides. By “forging connections across the different disciplines” (Moran 14), I was using interdisciplinarity without even realizing as I saw that Bacchae used deus ex machina. According to the Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms by Ross Murfin and Supryia M. Ray, deus ex machina is “a phrase referring specifically to the intervention of a nonhuman force to resolve a seemingly unresolvable conflict in a literary work” (108). This occurred in Bacchae when Agave, a maenad that does not act fully human or herself as she is under a trance that can’t recognize her own son, finally appears in the play just to solve the problem (or problem depending on whose point of view you’re looking from, in this case the point of view of Dionysus) of killing Pentheus in Bacchae. Agave finishes the story by killing Pentheus, having never shown up before in person in the play, resolving a conflict that seemed unresolvable, as Dionysus wouldn’t do his own dirty work. Euripides also employed this technic in having the god Helios take Medea away to end of Medea.
All this happiness stemmed from the fact that I chose two classes in the beginning of the semester that I thought I’d enjoy. This goes further than just the freedom of being a college student (yet another inalienable right from the Declaration of Independence). This had to do with me pursuing happiness, as Bentham would advise. His felicific calculus is as Dr. Bob Zunjic explains it, “A sum total of pleasures.” Despite the fact that I am not pursuing theatre as a major or minor, I am enjoying myself in making connections and getting to read more, as well as using interdisciplinarity.