Everyone wants happiness. Some have argued that happiness is too vague a word, and attempts to argue how to attain it only take for granted what happiness is. Dan Haybron wrote an article for Stanford titled “Happiness” which suggests that there are two considerations of happiness — the psychological emotion of it, and the more broad idea of well-being.
My name is David Klier. I studied philosophy at Arizona State University and have taken over 20 philosophy courses from universities such as Yale and Harvard. Happiness is the issue that drew me to philosophy. I haven’t spent as much time on the topic as I would have liked, and I intend on emphasizing this issue as I am in search of how I should look at happiness. This article is going to look at an article by Stephen Anderson entitled “Hap & Happiness.”
To be straightforward, Anderson is advocating for an Aristotelian view of happiness. That is, not the psychological state, but something more of a life satisfaction theory. This has to do with happiness as well-being. Aristotle argued that one must look at ones whole life — from begining to end — in order to determine if ones life was happy — or rather eudaimonious.
“The human good turns out to be activity of soul in conformity with excellence, and if there are more than one excellence, in conformity with the best and most complete.
But we must add ‘in complete life’. For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.”
— Aristotle, “Nicomachaen Ethics”
Aristotle is arguing that one cannot count their life as a happy, or good one on the basis of one day, not even a summer or a year. It takes a lifetime — because we are asking about our life writ large — to determine if that life was a happy or good one.
Anderson agrees with this view. By considering happiness not a feeling or experience but an overview of ones life satisfaction. As such he aligns himself with the life satisfaction theory.
“To be happy… is not merely to experience a feeling, but to be confident that the life one has lived has, in total, attained to excellence pleasing… and admirable to any virtuous onlooker. One’s life has, as we say, ‘amounted to something’; one has ‘lived up to one’s promises’ and so ‘attained greatness’.”
— Stephen Anderson, “Hap & Happiness”
This has stuck with me deeply. It’s quite possible that the reason many keep chasing the ‘hit’ of dopamine that we associate with happiness is because we misunderstand that as happiness when it’s not, the hedontic view of happiness is more akin to a drug abuse, metaphorically, and potentially literally. Of course, many — this writer included — have reasonably come to this conclusion. The problem is that the happiness we are chasing is not a logical reason, but an emotional pursuit. Without this understanding that dopamine hits are not happiness, we will continue to chase.
There is one major flaw I find in Anderson — and Aristotle’s — view though. If we cannot determine if we are happy until our life is complete, then it is safe to assume we cannot consider ourselves happy until we hit our deathbed. This sounds miserable.
This isn’t too terribly damning, however. It just requires a reframing of what we are talking about. Instead of asking whether I have had a good life — a happy life — we need to add a small caveat as a marker: so far.
I am quite an existentialist; I believe we are (generally, but with some things predispositioned) a blank state — or tabula rasa — from birth, and define ourselves as we make choices throughout our lives. In this method of determining whether I am happy, what I can do is apply the life satisfaction theory towards the major choices — the ones that have mattered — I have made and ask myself if I am satisfied with them. Surely, I can’t tell you what exactly would have happened had I made other choices though. So this may mean that I see these choices through rose-colored glasses. But when I am trying to determine my happiness, and choices being the matter of determining my happiness, looking at my choices is all I have. So, maybe the question I should ask of my choices is whether they were reasonable to make — and if they have been, then I can consider myself satisfied with them. If I am satisfied with them, then I can say I am happy.
It may not be a matter of whether the choice you made was a good one, but whether the choice you made was reasonable.
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