Joseph Warren
Mr. Morgan
11/4/2014
ERH 207-03
What is Happiness?
Happiness is something that everyone is striving towards, but most people don’t know what they’re looking for. Happiness defies easy definition, perhaps because it is something so personal, that it is created and defined at the individual. But surely there is a model to follow, a blueprint or framework with which to build one’s own happiness, or to know when one has achieved it. The ancient greek philosophers, notably Aristotle, seemed to equate happiness with a “flourishing life,” that is, fulfilling our human purposes. Others say that happiness is an emotional state, and still others, called hedonists, that our pleasure is happiness, the more pleasure in your life, and the less suffering, the happier you are. All of these theories have their merits, and this essay intends to examine each one, and identify which is the best, or whether they are leave something to be desired.
Eudaimonia is a greek word that translates (roughly) to happiness. It implies a flourishing, a successful life, in that a man fulfills his purpose on the earth. This is a holistic approach to the concept of happiness, as it can only be determined if a man flourished, or had a happy life, at the end of his life. It’s taking into account every action, every circumstance, and every emotion. This concept of fulfillment as happiness makes a lot of sense, it’s a complete picture, it cannot be contained in a fleeting moment, but there are holes in the theory. Or at least points that cause one to question the theory’s validity. What about the man who was suffering his entire life, but in his final years achieves whatever it was his dreams were? He has two years of contentment after sixty of feeling invalid. Was he a happy man? This theory of eudaimonia would say yes he was, while common sense might say that two years of flourishing doesn’t make up for sixty years of misery. Yet as he lived a full life he should be considered a happy man.
The hedonist concept of happiness is so simple that some consider it base. To the hedonist, happiness is pleasure. If one’s life is full of pleasure and (mostly) free from suffering, under the hedonist gaze, one would be happy. This is a theory that is associated closely with Utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham, and John Stuart Mill. This is an idea that has a lot of merit, and its many detractors, though many, can be dealt with, for the most part. As mentioned above, there are those that find the theory that pleasure is all there is to happiness to be overly simple, and even offensive. If simple pleasure is all that it takes to be happy, why would a person want something like conscious thought? One may as well be a pig. This argument is countered however with the idea of quality versus quantity applying to pleasure, and thus happiness. So while the happiness a pig feels while wallowing in the mud might be great, nobody would trade it for the pleasure of listening to a Beethoven sonata, or the pleasure and satisfaction that one feels when accomplishing something difficult.
An interesting question is whether or not hedonism can coexist with the previously stated eudaimonia concept. The greeks would probably say no, but the hedonists might very well say yes. If the goal of a hedonist’s life is to achieve pleasure and happiness, there seems to be no reason why that ultimate pleasure that she is searching for, might not be a flourishing of sorts. Surely nothing is more satisfying or pleasurable than fulfilling one’s purpose? The concept of a man whose life is filled with simple pleasures, while achieving nothing, being happy, is as ludicrous as the idea of the pig being more happy than the man. These higher pursuits are what define humanity, though they could be as simple as raising a family, or being good at your job. Hedonism is often oversimplified, but it can encompass some of the other theories about happiness.