Happiness

1. The ordinary notion

‘Happiness’ is a central term – for some philosophers the central term – in ethics. It is also a term in everyday speech, and one should be aware of how the philosophical and the ordinary uses of the word are related.

‘Happy’ comes from the noun ‘hap’: what just happens, chance, luck. It came to mean having good hap, fortunate, lucky, a sense that it still retains (death can be a happy release). Etymology is not meaning, but there is a large etymological residue in our current use of the word. In a very common use now, to be ‘happy’ is to be satisfied or contented with having a good measure of what one regards as important in life. In this use of the word, ‘happy’ has to do with one’s situation; one is fortunate. It also has to do with one’s state of mind; one is glad or cheerful. It typically has to do with both situation and state of mind (one has the latter because of the former), but the two elements can appear in very different proportions in different cases. At one extreme, a martyr can go happy to the stake, merely secure in the conviction of right. At another extreme, a person can be happy (cheerful) for a few moments before realizing how unfavourable the situation actually is. There are other current uses of the word as well; for example, ‘happy’ can mean ‘productive of favourable results’ (a happy intervention). There is no definition of ‘happiness’, in the sense of a list of essential properties. Few words in a natural language, especially words covering as much ground as ‘happiness’, allow definition in that form. We can use these words correctly; hence we know their meaning. But we know it by catching on to the use of the words, not by catching on to a set of defining properties.

‘Happiness’ does not mean the same as ‘pleasure’, despite J.S. Mill’s definition (1861) (see Mill, J.S. §8 Pleasure). He defined ‘happiness’ as ‘pleasure, and the absence of pain’. But the words mark different features of life; the martyr who goes happy to the stake is unlikely to do so with pleasure. Nor does ‘happiness’ mean the same as ‘wellbeing’, if the latter term is used, as it often is, of one’s actual situation. Because of the psychological element in the word, one may be ‘happy’ when things are going badly for one, if one is unaware that they are.

There are, as we have noted, two important strands to happiness, one’s situation and one’s state of mind. If it is a long stretch of time that one is interested in – say, ‘a happy life’ – one is likely to focus more on situation than on a flow of psychological states. If it is a short period, it is not uncommon to focus on psychological states. By and large philosophers are more interested in the long term use. Certain tensions can emerge in speaking of ‘happy lives’. One’s life is happy if one is content that life has brought one much of what one regards as important. The standard case is one in which one regards certain things as important because they are important and one thinks that life has brought them because it has brought them. But what happens to the use of the word ‘happiness’ if one or other of the standard conditions fails? Think, for instance, of a society in which women’s expectations are very low. Aspirations are largely relative to expectations. A particular woman in that society might be pathetically content with a small improvement in her generally miserable lot. Would we say that she has a ‘happy life’ merely because she is content? There would be strain in saying so because there is some pull in these lifetime assessments towards a person’s objective situation, and away from the person’s subjective responses. People may have various views about what good fortune in life is, but when they explain their conception of a happy life they will describe what they regard as good fortune, not what they believe, justified or not, will produce states of contentment or cheerfulness. I have been speaking of a tension in our use of the word ‘happiness’. There is also a troubling tension in our attempts to be happy. One route to happiness is to strive to achieve more of what is important in life. Another route is to be content with what one has already got. It is not easy, though just possible, to take both routes.