Two Definitions of Happiness
What is our relationship to happiness? What do we mean when we call someone "happy?"
For the last few weeks, we’ve spent some time setting up how we plan to approach defining happiness. We started by laying out our question, then considered some possible approaches before finally settling on an approach rooted in philosophical reasoning. Now, we’re ready to jump into the problem itself.
Our first question is this: What is happiness? Obviously, this question is deceptively simple. There’s no brief dictionary definition available here—we have to dig deeper, using both reason and experience to understand what it is we’re talking about.
If we intend to use philosophical reasoning as a tool, beginning by looking at a philosophical approach to happiness might be useful. Let’s go to one of the most ancient definitions of happiness ever offered: One from Aristotle.
A perspective from ancient philosophy
Aristotle faced the same puzzle of defining happiness in his famous Nicomachean Ethics. This might seem a bit strange to us: Why would he ask about happiness in a work on ethics? With our modern understanding of ethics, these seem like disconnected concepts. What unites them?
To understand this, we need to talk about Aristotle’s understanding of human nature. He begins Nicomachean Ethics with a very simple argument: Every action humans take aims at some end. We always do things with some idea of what we’d like to bring about through our actions.
This can be seen very simply in life. Someone doesn’t go to a doctor just for the sake of going to the doctor. Someone goes to the doctor for the sake of health. Now, we might also ask what someone pursues health for. There are many answers possible—people want to be comfortable, to live a long life, or to have the capacity to keep doing their work—but even with these, it seems that we could again ask the question, “Why do you want that?”
However, it doesn’t seem that this chain can be infinite. There has to be something that we’re really after, some root cause of these aims.
With this in mind, Aristotle takes this as his fundamental question: What is the basic thing humans want? What do we look for in every action? If we can answer this question, then we can know what it is that is naturally good for people. And, if we know what’s good for people, we have a much clearer idea of what the right thing to do is.
The one thing pursued for its own sake
It should be clear where this is going: Aristotle concludes that we pursue all these things for the sake of happiness, and we pursue happiness only for its own sake. If you asked someone, “Why do you want to be happy?” they would simply stare in confusion. Happiness isn’t pursued because it brings about something good—it’s pursued because it is good in itself.
This is one way to define happiness: It is the one thing that we are always pursuing, no matter what we’re doing. Happiness is the primary goal of human action—in a sense, our purpose is happiness.
The need for direction
This should also offer some clear insight on why we might feel dissatisfied with parts of our lives. Let’s return to work for a moment. For many, there might seem to be a disconnect between work and happiness. Someone who goes to a job that seems to take all their time with no reward clearly doesn’t see a link between work and happiness. They might still choose to work for fear of the unhappiness and uncertainty that would come from unemployment, but it’s not clear that what they are doing leads them closer to happiness.
It seems that this miserable worker senses that their work isn’t a likely path to happiness. In turn, this action seems unreasonable. There’s no good reason to do it, nor any clear end in mind. It seems to go against a very basic rule of human action.
This might be the cause of all dissatisfaction with work. If it seems that there is no path to happiness in your work, then it will naturally feel worthless. But it’s also clear that many feel trapped, since the alternative (unemployment) might be just as bad or worse. It’s obvious why someone would feel miserable in this situation: They’re being forced to go against their nature.
A perspective from experience
This definition tells us what role happiness plays in our lives. It’s our direction, the thing that we’re always looking for. However, while this tells us how we relate to happiness, it still doesn’t tell us what happiness itself is. When we say that someone is happy, what are we saying about them? What is the experience of happiness?
While the first definition of happiness was rooted in objective reasoning, it seems like this has to be rooted in something more subjective. We need to investigate the actual experience of happiness to see what it means to be happy.
Examples from life
Let’s start simply by asking what kind of scenarios we’d call ourselves happy in. Someone enjoying a nice meal might be happy. Someone at a party might be happy. A young mother who’s stressed and swamped with work might be happy in spite of all those difficulties. Even a monk deep in fasting and meditation might be happy. It’s clear that happiness isn’t simply one activity.
What do all these have in common? It’s hard to see what all of them share without simply repeating that all of them share in some sort of happiness. A monk’s extended fasting and a partygoer’s enjoyable buzz feel like complete opposites—what do they have in common that makes them worth calling by the same name?
Let’s take a bit of a backwards route here. Instead of asking about happiness, let’s ask about unhappiness. What is unhappiness? Where does it come from? What does it mean when we say that someone is unhappy?
The cause of unhappiness
We can look at experience again to find some guidance. Let’s take a lonely person for example. It shouldn’t be hard to see just why they’re unhappy—there’s very little ambiguity. A lonely person is unhappy because they need companionship.
We could also look at someone dealing with something like poverty for an example. Naturally, a starving person will struggle to feel happy. There is a clear need they have that is not being met, and when this need is not met, it’s hard to take the sort of positive or grateful disposition that happiness entails.
If we reviewed more examples, talking about unhappy people who’re struggling with meaninglessness, poverty, or anything along those lines, a clear theme would emerge. In each of these cases, there’s an obvious thing a person is lacking. Unhappiness happens when there is need.
Happiness and need
If unhappiness has its origins in need, then happiness should logically be the opposite. Happiness is most often the fulfillment of a need. Put simply, happiness is contentment. To be happy means to feel that you have what is sufficient for you. A fully happy person could say that regardless of what they might be struggling with, they still don’t need anything more.
Happiness, then, is every person pursues for its own sake and a state of contentment in which one needs nothing more. Happiness is the fulfillment of human need, the thing that we’re always striving to reach.
This is not an exhaustive definition, obviously. There are a thousand more things to be said about happiness, and there are a thousand more places to disagree on things. But this offers a solid starting point to begin investigating happiness: Now that we know how it’s linked to human action and human need, we can look to both of those for a great understanding of happiness in action.
Now, it’s time to begin asking some more difficult questions. What is it that humans need? How can we know what our real needs are? And, of course, where does this lead us in action?