We explain what happiness is for philosophy and its questions. Also, what it meant for the main thinkers of Ancient Greece and for religions.
Happiness is a state of mind and one of the main purposes in human life.
What is happiness?
Happiness is a philosophical concept that is investigated from different branches of the discipline, such as politics, theology, and especially ethics. Due to its subjective nature and the fact that it is conditioned by the time in which it is thought, Happiness is a difficult concept to define.
Despite the difficulty in finding a unanimous definition of happiness, there are several features that these definitions share. In general, Happiness is linked to an idea of personal appreciation whose subjective character varies according to social condition, age, degree of culture and one’s own social realization. Each person’s ideal of happiness is based on their subjectivity, and is also the result of a cultural and social construction.
The question about what happiness is is the question of the possibility of happiness itself: those who ask about it assume it, but to find it (if that is possible), they must know what it is. While some authors consider happiness to be a good, others maintain that it is a feeling, an emotion, a mental state, and even a disposition of the body.
Throughout the history of philosophy, many authors have worked on the idea of happiness. From ancient Greece to the contemporary world, thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Saint Augustine, Spinoza and Bertrand Russell have written about it. Even other sciences, such as sociology or psychology, work on it, using their own methodologies.
Key points
- Happiness for philosophy is an open idea that is related to personal appreciation.
- Each person’s ideal of happiness is subjective, varies according to social condition and is the result of a cultural and social construction.
- There are various conceptions of philosophy that consider it as a good or as a feeling. However, almost all of them conclude that it is the ultimate goal of the human being.
Happiness in the Greek world
Many Greek philosophers reflected on happiness. Plato, for example, in his dialogue Philebus, wonders what happiness consists of. While one of his characters answers that it is pleasure, another of them says that happiness is wisdom. As in all of Plato’s dialogues, the question ends unresolved, although, it is true, the idea is suggested that Happiness is a balanced combination of pleasure and wisdom..
Other philosophical schools also sought an idea of happiness. Epicureanism, for example, understood happiness as self-sufficiency based on the idea of moderate pleasure. Stoicism, on the other hand, held happiness as a form of individual strength, supported by the acceptance of a certain existence.
Aristotle, a disciple of Plato, states in his Nicomachean Ethics that Happy is he who lives and does good, since happiness is a life of upright and happy conduct. Aristotle maintains that man is a composite of body and soul. From this it follows that happiness is one good among many, since the human being is not a single thing. Well, there are two forms of happiness: the solitary one, which is eternal, and the one referred to the everyday man, which consists of the sum of all goods. He who achieves virtue is he who possesses all goods and, thus, happiness.
Happiness as Aristotelian “eudaimonia”
“Eudaimonia” is a term used by Aristotle, which is usually translated as “happiness.” However, in the philosopher’s works, eudaimonia is used as a synonym for “good fortune.” The adjective “eudaimon” refers to someone who is under the assistance of a divinity (in Greek, “daimon”).
Although Plato was the first to translate the term to refer to the good life, Aristotle placed it in the realm of morality, stating that Eudaimonia is the good lifefrom a moral perspective. For him, there is no happy life (“eudaimon”) without virtue (“areté”).
At the same time, eudaimonia has to do with permanence and stability, since it is a state that is characterized by being a feeling opposite to what is transitory.
According to Aristotle, happiness, as eudaimonia, is the ultimate or supreme good to which we aspire. This supreme good shares the following characteristics:
- Eudaimonia is the ultimate end, and all things are done for it.
- Eudaimonia as the ultimate goal must be complete.
- Eudaimonia as a complete good has to be self-sufficient.
- Eudaimonia as self-sufficient cannot be increased by the addition of other goods.
Happiness as Epicurean “eudaimonia”
Like Aristotle, Epicurus also spoke of happiness as eudaimonia in the sense of a full life. However, Epicurus’ philosophy is hedonistic, that is, he maintains that pleasure is the only intrinsic good that can be aspired to. This means that things are good if they bring pleasure and, on the other hand, they are bad if they produce pain or displeasure (which is the absence of pleasure, and not necessarily something painful).
In this sense, Epicurus held that Eudaimonia was a continuous experience of pleasure, free of pain and anguish. The Epicurean doctrine can be thought of as a doctrine of happiness, since it is offered as a remedy against pain and suffering of the soul and body.
Its objective is to give simple guidelines or recommendations to guide thought and action towards happiness as an end in itself. Happiness is, then, something that can be acquired, but it is also acquired permanently: it is a state that we aspire to reach.
Happiness in Christianity and Saint Augustine
The arrival of Christianity brought about a reinterpretation of the idea of happiness. The translation of the Greek “eudaimonía” into Latin resulted in what is known as “happiness”.
Happiness was supposed to be the ultimate goal of human existence, as described, for example, by Saint Thomas in the 18th century. Thomas held that happiness consisted in a beatific vision of the essence of God, to which every Christian should aspire.
A beatific vision is a vision that, besides being peaceful (because it gives serenity), also produces placidity. This serenity and placidity are given by the divine component involved in the vision. This is happiness for St. Thomas.
The ideas of Saint Thomas were partially supported by the ideas of Saint Augustine, also known as Augustine of Hippo. His opinions arise from his position regarding the ideas of good and evil. Unlike Manichaeism, which held that evil and good are two equal entities, for Augustine, evil was only the absence of good. Thus, evil owes its existence to good because it is a corrupted good or it is the lack of that good.
From this it follows that, although evil cannot exist without good, it may be the case that good exists without evil. The Augustinian doctrine exemplifies this with the idea of God as a supreme being: the only pure and perfect being, who is the sum of all goods and powers. The idea of happiness lives in the idea of God, since The ultimate goal of the human being is to aspire to goodand that is what a happy life consists of.
Saint Augustine set a clear precedent for a hypothetical-moral imperative: how to act in every situation. For him, happiness consists in the practice of virtues, to direct life towards God, that is, towards absolute good. God is the center of existence and only in his entity (immutable and infinite) can happiness occur as truth, goodness and permanence.
This idea of happiness as the ultimate enjoyment of truth (which considers God as the equivalent of truth, and therefore, of happiness), was taken up by Christian thinkers and philosophers after St. Augustine. The inclination to believe that only a life in God is a happy life It is based on the Augustinian conception of happiness.
Saint Thomas reconciled this conception with the Aristotelian view of happiness as eudaimonia. If for Aristotle happiness was the maximum good that could be aspired to, Saint Thomas shared this idea with the Augustinian conception that this good itself is God in himself.
Happiness in Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was a British philosopher, mathematician and writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Among the numerous philosophical problems to which he dedicated his work, we can find the question of happiness.
Russell adopted an idea of happiness from a moderate empiricism. Believing that happiness was not a rationalist ideal, He maintained that happiness was completely dependent on each person for himself and on external circumstances. in which each one was involved.
Happiness depends, according to Russel, on the following factors:
- The friendly interest in people and things.
- The enthusiasm for life.
- Affection towards others and towards oneself.
- The family.
- Work as a means of livelihood.
All these points lead to the idea that the happy life is the good life. Without these elements it is very difficult to achieve happiness.since the Russellian vision depends on all these factors in order to lead a moderate, good life tending towards happiness.
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References
- De Landázuri, MCO (2015). Life and happiness in the ethics of Epicurus. Salamanca Philosophy Notebooks, 42.
- Castelló, SF (Ed.). (1993). Nicomachean Ethics (Vol. 9). University of Valencia.
- Lejard, F., & Oroz, J. (1975). The theme of happiness in the dialogues of Saint Augustine. Augustinus20(77/78), 29-81.
- Figueroa, ANM (2022). The transition to happiness according to Aristotle, Epicurus, Epictetus, Sextus Empiricus, Saint Augustine of Hippo and Saint Thomas Aquinas: A decolonial analysis. Analectic8(51), 1-20.