Word Gems: Happiness: 1-Minute Essay

The following represents a distillation of Dr. Adler's Syntopicon Essay plus my own thoughts:

Though, as Pascal wrote, we are helpless to avoid seeking happiness, there is disagreement on what it is.

Despite humankind's seemingly universal need to pursue happiness, Kant almost despairs of arriving at a definition: "The notion of happiness is so indefinite," he writes, "that although every man wishes to attain it, yet he never can say definitely and consistently what it is that he really wishes."

When a person says "I feel happy," he or she is saying "I feel satisfied" or pleased -- that which was desired has been gained.

Kant, most eloquently, expands on this. Happiness, to offer true satisfaction, must not only address all ("extensive") our various desires, but they must be satisfied with sufficient intensity ("intensive") and proper duration ("protensive").

Further, speaking of individual happiness, Kant suggests that it must be discovered by exploring personal inclinations. This kind of happiness is something that is learned over time; that is, we find out what (and who) we like and don't like by experience.

Other philosophers, such as Aristotle, speak of a different kind of happiness, one based not on opinions or feelings of the moment, but on our natural desires, ones that are common to all human beings. Because of the universality of these desires, a science of ethics becomes possible, addressing what men and women ought to do for the attainment of happiness.

Happiness is related to the subject of "Good and Evil" (see Editor's essay); these topics address human desires and deal with the issue of the real and the merely apparent. People desire many things which they believe will bring them happiness but, in fact, take them in the opposite direction. When we pursue the "real" good, we will be desiring that which we ought to desire, and will be on the path to genuine happiness.

Kant offers a different twist on this old theme. There are some who pursue happiness no matter what the cost to honor, duty, or morality (think of the villain in the Star Trek movie, Generations, trying to reach the Nexus); others, more stoically, emphasize "morality alone" -- neither approach, says Kant, will take one to the "complete good." These two, dutiful action and purposeful quest for happiness, must be united to constitute the true summum bonum, the supreme and complete good. Even the stoic, if not now then in the future, "must be able to hope for the possession of happiness"; for, without this hope, even the spartan-stoic, his resources of steel-will spent, will eventually "burn out" in frustration.

But be careful how you mix these two approaches, says Kant. Though a person cannot hope to be happy without obeying what he calls the moral law, he or she must not submit to duty in order to gain happiness; in other words, happiness cannot be bought like a loaf of bread, even with the currency of morality or good conduct. This kind of humanitarian service, a morality motivated by gain -- even by the prize of happiness -- is tainted with selfishness and, ironically, becomes an act of immorality. As such, happiness can be attained only as by-product of something else.

It was Aristotle who gave us the term, summum bonum, the supreme and complete good. But is this highest form of happiness a single good or a full array of goods?

Though the person who says "I feel happy" is really saying "I feel satisfied," that satisfaction usually doesn't last very long. There is a great difference between "feeling happy" at a given moment and "being happy" for a lifetime -- a difference between a "good time" and a "good life." (However, lest anyone misunderstand, a "good life" will offer ample opportunity for a "good time.")

Boethius, in a famous saying, expresses that happiness is "a life made perfect by the possession, in aggregate, of all good things." Adopting this definition, happiness becomes not a particular good but the sum of all goods.

The summum bonum is the final and great good and, as such, is sought for its own sake, not for the sake of something else. If we ask someone why he or she wants to be happy, it will be difficult for them to respond with anything other than something like "I just do"; we want to be happy as an end in itself, not just to get something more or something else.

Some teachers have seen happiness as a state of spiritual peace, a coming to rest wherein all desires are quieted. There is debate as to whether such a state of bliss is even possible in this life. Most theologians answer negatively here with Augustine claiming that even our earthly happiness, at its best, is merely the "solace of our misery" compared to the joys of the next life.

As such, happiness, many teachers maintain, can never be achieved in this life but, at best, is only in the process of being achieved.

happiness cannot be found in one good time, or even in a lot of them, but only in a whole good life

Editor’s note: the following is from preliminary paragraphs of An Introduction To The Great Books And To A Liberal Education, the fourth reading. It serves as excellent restatement and synthesis of topics discussed above.

Happiness is the theme of the first book of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. The fact that happiness is a subject of universal interest confirms Aristotle’s most fundamental insight about it: all men want to be happy, and everything else they want they seek as a means of becoming happy.

Among the things that men call good and strive for, happiness stands out as the one good which, if fully possessed, would leave a man satisfied and at rest. No one would call himself completely happy if anything essential to his well-being remained beyond his grasp. Happiness must, therefore, be the sum of all good things.

This, in brief, is the meaning of happiness that Aristotle sets before us, not as his own definition of it, but as the sense of it which everyone shares. Once we acknowledge this, as we must, we realize how often we misuse the word when we say, in a joyous moment, that we feel “happy” or, in a sad one, “unhappy.” Life is full of good times and bad, moments of joy and sadness, but if happiness is the totality of goods, it cannot be found in one good time, or even in a lot of them, but only in a whole good life.

It is this fact about happiness which helps us to understand why the Declaration of Independence talks about the “pursuit of happiness” rather than the enjoyment of it as a natural right. The pursuit of happiness takes a lifetime and only when the race has been run can we look back and say whether it has been well run or not. The first book of the Nicomachean Ethics proposes the standards by which we can judge whether or not it has.