what is happiness philosophy essay

1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

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Happiness: What is it to be Happy?

Author: Kiki Berk Category: Ethics , Phenomenology and Existentialism Words: 992

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Do you want to be happy? If you’re like most people, then yes, you do.

But what is happiness? What does it mean to be “happy”? [1]

This essay discusses four major philosophical theories of happiness. [2]

1. Hedonism

According to hedonism, happiness is simply the experience of pleasure. [3] A happy person has a lot more pleasure than displeasure (pain) in her life. To be happy, then, is just to feel good. In other words, there’s no difference between being happy and feeling happy.

Famous hedonists include the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus and the modern English philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. [4] These philosophers all took happiness to include intellectual pleasures (such as reading a book) in addition to physical pleasures (such as having sex).

Although we associate being happy with feeling good, many philosophers think that hedonism is mistaken.

First, it’s possible to be happy without feeling good (such as when a happy person has a toothache), and it’s also possible to feel good without being happy (such as when an unhappy person gets a massage). Since happiness and pleasure can come apart, they can’t be the same thing.

Second, happiness and pleasure seem to have different properties. Pleasures are often fleeting, simple, and superficial (think of the pleasure involved in eating ice cream), whereas happiness is supposed to be lasting, complex, and profound. Things with different properties can’t be identical, so happiness can’t be the same thing as pleasure.

These arguments suggest that happiness and pleasure aren’t identical. That being said, it’s hard to imagine a happy person who never feels good. So, perhaps happiness involves pleasure without being identical to it.

2. Virtue Theory

According to virtue theory, happiness is the result of cultivating the virtues—both moral and intellectual—such as wisdom, courage, temperance, and patience. A happy person must be sufficiently virtuous. To be happy, then, is to cultivate excellence and to flourish as a result. This view is famously held by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. [5]

Linking happiness to virtue has the advantage of treating happiness as a lasting, complex, and profound phenomenon. It also explains how happiness and pleasure can come apart, since a person can be virtuous without feeling good, and a person can feel good without being virtuous.

In spite of these advantages, however, virtue theory is questionable. An important part of being virtuous is being morally good. But are immoral people always unhappy? Arguably not. Many bad people seem happy in spite of—or even because of—their unsavory actions. And a similar point can be made about intellectual virtue: unwise or irrational people aren’t always unhappy, either. In fact, some of these people seem happy as a direct result of their intellectual deficiencies. “Ignorance is bliss,” the saying goes!

But virtue theorists have a response here. Maybe some immoral people seem happy, on the surface; but that doesn’t mean that they are truly happy, at some deeper level. And the same thing can be said about people who lack the intellectual virtues: ignorance may lead to bliss, but that bliss isn’t true happiness. So, there seems to be some room for debate on these issues.

3. Desire Satisfaction Theory

According to the desire satisfaction theory, happiness consists in getting what you want—whatever that happens to be. A happy person has many of her desires satisfied; and the more her desires are satisfied, the happier she is.

Even though getting what you want can be a source of happiness, identifying happiness with desire satisfaction is problematic.

To start, this implies that the only way to become happier is by satisfying a desire. This seems wrong. Sometimes our happiness is increased by getting something we didn’t previously want—such as a surprise birthday party or getting stuck taking care of a neighbor’s cat. This implies that desire satisfaction is not necessary for happiness.

Desire satisfaction is not always sufficient for happiness, either. Unfortunately, it is common for people to feel disappointed when they get what they want. Many accomplishments, such as earning a degree or winning a tournament, simply don’t bring the long-lasting happiness that we expect. [6]

So, even if getting what we want sometimes makes us happy, these counterexamples suggest that happiness does not consist in desire satisfaction. [7]

4. Life Satisfaction Theory

According to the life satisfaction theory, happiness consists in being satisfied with your life. A happy person has a positive impression of her life in general, even though she might not be happy about every single aspect of it. To be happy, then, means to be content with your life as a whole.

It’s controversial whether life satisfaction is affective (a feeling) or cognitive (a belief). On the one hand, life satisfaction certainly comes with positive feelings. On the other hand, it’s possible to step back, reflect on your life, and realize that it’s good, even when you’re feeling down. [8]  

One problem for this theory is that it’s difficult for people to distinguish how they feel in the moment from how they feel about their lives overall. Studies have shown that people report feeling more satisfied with their lives when the weather is good, even though this shouldn’t make that much of a difference. But measuring life satisfaction is complicated, so perhaps such studies should be taken with a grain of salt. [9]

5. Conclusion

Understanding what happiness is should enable you to become happier.

First, decide which theory of happiness you think is true, based on the arguments.

Second, pursue whatever happiness is according to that theory: seek pleasure and try to avoid pain (hedonism), cultivate moral and intellectual virtue (virtue theory), decide what you really want and do your best to get it (desire satisfaction theory), or change your life (or your attitude about it) so you feel (or believe) that it’s going well (life satisfaction theory).

And if you’re not sure which theory of happiness is true, then you could always try pursuing all of these things. 😊

[1] This might seem like an empirical (scientific) question rather than a philosophical one. However, this essay asks the conceptual question of what happiness is, and conceptual questions belong to philosophy, not to science.

[2] Happiness is commonly distinguished from “well-being,” i.e., the state of a life that is worth living. Whether or not happiness is the same thing as well-being is an open question, but most philosophers think it isn’t. See, for example, Haybron (2020).

[3] The word “hedonism” has different uses in philosophy. In this paper, it means that happiness is the same thing as pleasure (hedonism about happiness). But sometimes it is used to mean that happiness is the only thing that has intrinsic value (hedonism about value) or that humans are always and only motivated by pleasure (psychological hedonism). It’s important not to confuse these different uses of the word.

[4] For more on Epicurus and happiness, see Konstan (2018). For more on Bentham and Mill on happiness, see Driver (2014), as well as John Stuart Mill on The Good Life: Higher-Quality Pleasures by Dale E. Miller and Consequentialism by Shane Gronholz

[5] For more on Plato and happiness, see Frede (2017); for more on Aristotle and happiness, see Kraut (2018), and on the Stoics and happiness, see Baltzly (2019).

[6] For a discussion of the phenomenon of disappointment in this context see, for example, Ben Shahar (2007).

[7] For more objections to the desire satisfaction theory, see Shafer-Landau (2018) and Vitrano (2013).

[8] If happiness is life satisfaction, then happiness seems to be “subjective” in the sense that a person cannot be mistaken about whether or not she is happy. Whether happiness is subjective in this sense is controversial, and a person who thinks that a person can be mistaken about whether or not she is happy will probably favor a different theory of happiness.

[9] See Weimann, Knabe and Schob (2015) and Berk (2018).

Baltzly, Dirk, “Stoicism”,  The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy  (Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/stoicism/>.

Berk, Kiki (2018). “Does Money Make Us Happy? The Prospects and Problems of Happiness Research in Economics,” in Journal of Happiness Studies, 19, 1241-1245.

Ben-Shahar, Tal (2007). Happier . New York: McGraw-Hill.

Driver, Julia, “The History of Utilitarianism”,  The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy  (Winter 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/utilitarianism-history/>.

Frede, Dorothea, “Plato’s Ethics: An Overview”,  The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy  (Winter 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/plato-ethics/>.

Haybron, Dan, “Happiness”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy  (Summer 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/happiness/>.

Konstan, David, “Epicurus”,  The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy  (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/epicurus/>.

Kraut, Richard, “Aristotle’s Ethics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/aristotle-ethics/>.

Shafer-Landau, Russ (2018). The Ethical Life: Fundamental Readings in Ethics and Moral Problems. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Vitrano, Christine (2013). The Nature and Value of Happiness. Boulder: Westview Press.

Weimann, Joachim, Andreas Knabe, and Ronnie Schob (2015). Measuring Happiness . Cambridge: The MIT Press.

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About the Author

Dr. Kiki Berk is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Southern New Hampshire University. She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the VU University Amsterdam in 2010. Her research focuses on Beauvoir’s and Sartre’s philosophies of death and meaning in life.

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The Philosophy of Happiness in Life (+ Aristotle’s View)

We all hope to be happy and live a ‘good life’– whatever that means! Do you wonder, what does it actually mean?

The basic role of ‘philosophy’ is to ask questions, and think about the nature of human thought and the universe. Thus, a discussion of the philosophy of happiness in life can be seen as an examination of the very nature of happiness and what it means for the universe.

Philosophers have been inquiring about happiness since ancient times. Aristotle, when he asked ‘ what is the ultimate purpose of human existence ’ alluded to the fact that purpose was what he argued to be ‘happiness’. He termed this eudaimonia – “ activity expressing virtue ”. This will all be explained shortly.

The purpose of this article is to explore the philosophy of happiness in life, including taking a closer look at Aristotle’s philosophy and answering some of those “big” questions about happiness and living a ‘good life’. In this article, you will also find some practical tips that hopefully you can put in place in your own life. Enjoy!

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Happiness & Subjective Wellbeing Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients identify sources of authentic happiness and strategies to boost wellbeing.

This Article Contains:

A look at the philosophy of happiness, aristotle on happiness, what is real happiness, the value and importance of having true happiness in life, the biggest causes that bring true happiness in life, 15 ways to create happy moments in life, five reasons to be happy from a philosophical perspective, finding happiness in family life, a look at happiness and productivity, how does loneliness affect life satisfaction, 6 recommended books, a take-home message.

Happiness. It is a term that is taken for granted in this modern age. However, since the dawn of time, philosophers have been pursuing the inquiry of happiness… after all, the purpose of life is not just to live, but to live ‘well’.

Philosophers ask some key questions about happiness: can people be happy? If so, do they want to? If people have both a desire to be happy and the ability to be happy, does this mean that they should, therefore, pursue happiness for themselves and others? If they can, they want to, and they ought to be happy, but how do they achieve this goal?

To explore the philosophy of happiness in life, first, the history of happiness will be examined.

Democritus, a philosopher from Ancient Greece, was the first philosopher in the western world to examine the nature of happiness (Kesebir & Diener, 2008). He put forth a suggestion that, unlike it was previously thought, happiness does not result from ‘favorable fate’ (i.e. good luck) or other external circumstances (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

Democritus contended that happiness was a ‘case of mind’, introducing a subjectivist view as to what happiness is (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

A more objective view of happiness was introduced by Socrates, and his student, Plato.

They put forth the notion that happiness was “ secure enjoyment of what is good and beautiful ” (Plato, 1999, p. 80). Plato developed the idea that the best life is one whereby a person is either pursuing pleasure of exercising intellectual virtues… an argument which, the next key figure in the development of the philosophy of happiness – Aristotle – disagreed with (Waterman, 1993).

The philosophy of Aristotle will be explored in depth in the next section of this article.

Hellenic history (i.e. ancient Greek times) was largely dominated by the prominent theory of hedonism (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

Hedonism is, to put it simply, the pursuit of pleasure as the only intrinsic good (Waterman, 1993). This was the Cyrenaic view of happiness. It was thought that a good life was denoted by seeking pleasure, and satisfying physical, intellectual/social needs (Kashdan, Biswas-Diener & King, 2008).

Kraut (1979, p. 178) describes hedonic happiness as “ the belief that one is getting the important things one wants, as well as certain pleasant affects that normally go along with this belief ” (Waterman, 1993).

In ancient times, it was also thought that it is not possible to live a good life without living in accordance with reason and morality (Kesebir & Diener, 2008). Epicurus, whose work was dominated by hedonism, contended that in fact, virtue (living according to values) and pleasure are interdependent (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

In the middle ages, Christian philosophers said that whilst virtue is essential for a good life, that virtue alone is not sufficient for happiness (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

According to the Christian philosophers, happiness is in the hands of God. Even though the Christians believed that earthly happiness was imperfect, they embraced the idea that Heaven promised eternal happiness (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

A more secular explanation of happiness was introduced in the Age of Enlightenment.

At this time, in the western world pleasure was regarded as the path to, or even the same thing as, happiness (Kesebir & Diener, 2008). From the early nineteenth century, happiness was seen as a value which is derived from maximum pleasure.

Utilitarians, such as the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, suggested the following: “ maximum surplus of pleasure over pain as the cardinal goal of human striving ” (Kesebir & Diener, 2008). Utilitarians believe that morals and legislation should be based on whatever will achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

In the modern era, happiness is something we take for granted. It is assumed that humans are entitled to pursue and attain happiness (Kesebir & Diener, 2008). This is evidenced by the fact that in the US declaration of independence, the pursuit of happiness is protected as a fundamental human right! (Conkle, 2008).

Go into any book store and large sections are dedicated to the wide range of ‘self-help’ books all promoting happiness.

What is This Thing Called Happiness?

It is incredibly challenging to define happiness . Modern psychology describes happiness as subjective wellbeing, or “ people’s evaluations of their lives and encompasses both cognitive judgments of satisfaction and affective appraisals of moods and emotions ” (Kesebir & Diener, 2008, p. 118).

The key components of subjective wellbeing are:

• Life satisfaction
• Satisfaction with important aspects of one’s life (for example work, relationships, health)
• The presence of positive affect
• Low levels of negative affect

These four components have featured in philosophical material on happiness since ancient times.

Subjective life satisfaction is a crucial aspect of happiness, which is consistent with the work of contemporary philosopher Wayne Sumner, who described happiness as ‘ a response by a subject to her life conditions as she sees them ’ (1999, p. 156).

Thus, if happiness is ‘a thing’ how is it measured?

Some contemporary philosophers and psychologists question self-report as an appropriate measure of happiness. However, many studies have found that self-report measures of ‘happiness’ (subjective wellbeing) are valid and reliable (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

Two other accounts of happiness in modern psychology are firstly, the concept of psychological wellbeing (Ryff & Singer, 1996) and secondly, self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000).

Both of these theories are more consistent with the eudaemonist theories of ‘ flourishing ’ (including Aristotle’s ideas) because they describe the phenomenon of needs (such as autonomy, self-acceptance, and mastery) being met (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

Eudaimonia will be explained in detail in the next section of the article (keep reading!) but for now, it suffices to say that eudaemonist theories of happiness define ‘happiness’ (eudaimonia) as a state in which an individual strives for the highest human good.

These days, most empirical psychological research puts forward the theory of subjective wellbeing rather than happiness as defined in a eudaimonic sense (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

Although the terms eudaimonia and subjectivewellbeing are not necessarily interchangeable, Kesebir and Diener (2008) argue that subjective wellbeing can be used to describe wellbeing, even if it may not be an absolutely perfect definition!

Can People be Happy?

In order to adequately address this question, it is necessary to differentiate between ‘ideal’ happiness and ‘actual’ happiness.

‘Ideal’ happiness implies a way of being that is complete, lasting and altogether perfect… probably outside of anyone’s reach! (Kesebir & Diener, 2008). However, despite this, people can actually experience mostly positive emotions and report overall satisfaction with their lives and therefore be deemed ‘happy’.

In fact, most people are happy. In a study conducted by the Pew Research Center in the US (2006), 84% of Americans see themselves as either “very happy” or “pretty happy” (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

Happiness also has an adaptive function. How is happiness adaptive? Well, positivity and wellbeing are also associated with people being confident enough to explore their environments and approach new goals, which increases the likelihood of them collecting resources.

The fact that most people report being happy, and happiness having an adaptive function, leads Kesebir and Diener (2008) to conclude that yes people can, in fact, be happy.

Do People Want to be Happy?

The overwhelming answer is yes! Research has shown that being happy is desirable. Whilst being happy is certainly not the only goal in life, nonetheless, it is necessary for a good life (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

A study by King and Napa (1998) showed that Americans view happiness as more relevant to the judgment of what constitutes a good life, rather than either wealth or ‘moral goodness’.

Should People be Happy?

Another way of putting this, is happiness justifiable? Happiness is not just the result of positive outcomes, such as better health, improved work performance, more ethical behavior, and better social relationships (Kesebir & Diener, 2008). It actually precedes and causes these outcomes!

Happiness leads to better health. For example, research undertaken by Danner, Snowdon & Friesen in 2001 examined the content of handwritten autobiographies of Catholic sisters. They found that expression in the writing that was characterized by positive affect predicted longevity 60 years later!

Achievement

Happiness is derived not from pursuing pleasure, but by working towards goals which are reflected in one’s values (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

Happiness can be predicted not merely by pleasure but by having a sense of meaning , purpose, and fulfillment. Happiness is also associated with better performance in professional life/work.

Social relationships and prosocial behavior

Happiness brings out the best in people… people who are happier are more social, cooperative and ethical (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

Happy individuals have also been shown to evaluate others more positively, show greater interest in interacting with others socially, and even be more likely to engage in self-disclosure (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

Happy individuals are also more likely to behave ethically (for example, choosing not to buy something because it is known to be stolen) (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

How to be happy?

The conditions and sources of happiness will be explored later on, so do keep reading… briefly in the meantime, happiness is caused by wealth, friends and social relationships, religion, and personality. These factors predict happiness.

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Chances are, you have heard of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Are you aware that it was Aristotle who introduced the ‘science of happiness’? (Pursuit of Happiness, 2018).

Founder of Lyceum, the first scientific institute in Athens, Aristotle delivered a series of lectures termed Nicomachean Ethics to present his theory of happiness (Pursuit of Happiness, 2018).

Aristotle asked, “ what is the ultimate purpose of human existence? ”. He thought that a worthwhile goal should be to pursue “ that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else ” (Pursuit of Happiness, 2018).

However, Aristotle disagreed with the Cyrenaic view that the only intrinsic good is pleasure (Waterman, 1993).

In developing his theory of ‘happiness’, Aristotle drew upon his knowledge about nature. He contended that what separates man from animal is rational capacity – arguing that a human’s unique function is to reason. He went on to say that pleasure alone cannot result in happiness because animals are driven by the pursuit of pleasure and according to Aristotle man has greater capacities than animals (Pursuit of Happiness, 2018).

Instead, he put forward the term ‘ eudaimonia ’.

To explain simply, eudaimonia is defined as ‘ activity expressing virtue ’ or what Aristotle conceived as happiness. Aristotle’s theory of happiness was as follows:

‘the function of man is to live a certain kind of life, and this activity implies a rational principle, and the function of a good man is the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed it is performed in accord with the appropriate excellence: if this is the case, then happiness turns out to be an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue’

(Aristotle, 2004).

A key component of Aristotle’s theory of happiness is the factor of virtue. He contended that in aiming for happiness, the most important factor is to have ‘complete virtue’ or – in other words – good moral character (Pursuit of Happiness, 2008).

Aristotle identified friendship as being one of the most important virtues in achieving the goal of eudaimonia (Pursuit of Happiness, 2008). In fact, he valued friendship very highly, and described a ‘virtuous’ friendship as the most enjoyable, combining both pleasure and virtue.

Aristotle went on to put forward his belief that happiness involves, through the course of an entire life, choosing the ‘greater good’ not necessarily that which brings immediate, short term pleasure (Pursuit of Happiness, 2008).

Thus, according to Aristotle, happiness can only be achieved at the life-end: it is a goal, not a temporary state of being (Pursuit of Happiness, 2008). Aristotle believed that happiness is not short-lived:

‘for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy’

Happiness (eudaimonia), to Aristotle, meant attaining the ‘daimon’ or perfect self (Waterman, 1990). Reaching the ‘ultimate perfection of our natures’, as Aristotle meant by happiness, includes rational reflection (Pursuit of Happiness, 2008).

He argued that education was the embodiment of character refinement (Pursuit of Happiness, 2008). Striving for the daimon (perfect self) gives life meaning and direction (Waterman, 1990). Having a meaningful, purposeful life is valuable.

Efforts that the individual puts in to strive for the daimon are termed ‘ personally expressive ’ (Waterman, 1990).

Personal expressiveness involves intense involvement in an activity, a sense of fulfillment when engaged in an activity, and having a sense of acting in accordance with one’s purpose (Waterman, 1990). It refers to putting in effort, feeling challenged and competent, having clear goals and concentrating (Waterman, 1993).

According to Aristotle, eudaimonia and hedonic enjoyment are separate and distinguishable (Waterman, 1993). However, in a study of university students, personal expressiveness (which is, after all a component of eudaimonia) was found to be positively correlated with hedonic enjoyment (Waterman, 1993).

Telfer (1980), on the other hand, claimed that eudaimonia is a sufficient but not a necessary condition for achieving hedonic enjoyment (Waterman, 1993). How are eudaimonia and hedonic enjoyment different?

Well, personal expressiveness (from striving for eudaimonia) is associated with successfully achieving self-realization, while hedonic enjoyment does not (Waterman, 1993).

Thus, Aristotle identified the best possible life goal and the achievement of the highest level of meeting one’s needs, self-realization many, many years before Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs!

Results from Waterman’s 1993 study provide empirical support for the association between ‘personal expressiveness’ and what was described by Csikszentimikalyi (1975) as “flow” (Waterman, 1993).

Flow , conceptualized as a cognitive-affective state, is an experience whereby the challenge a task presents to a person is aligned with the skills that individual has to deal with such challenges.

Understanding that flow is a distinctive cognitive-affective state combines hedonic enjoyment and personal expressiveness (Waterman, 1993).

Aristotle’s work Nicomachean Ethics contributed a great deal to the understanding of what happiness is. To summarise from Pursuit of Happiness (2018), according to Aristotle, the purpose and ultimate goal in life is to achieve eudaimonia (‘happiness’). He believed that eudaimonia was not simply virtue, nor pleasure, but rather it was the exercise of virtue.

According to Aristotle, eudaimonia is a lifelong goal and depends on rational reflection. To achieve a balance between excess and deficiency (‘temperance’) one displays virtues – for example, generosity, justice, friendship, and citizenship. Eudaimonia requires intellectual contemplation, in order to meet our rational capacities.

To answer Aristotle’s question of “ what is the ultimate purpose of human existence ” is not a simple task, but perhaps the best answer is that the ultimate goal for human beings is to strive for ‘eudaimonia’ (happiness).

Aristotle & virtue theory – CrashCourse

What does ‘true’ happiness look like? Is it landing the dream job? Having a child ? Graduating from university? Whilst happiness is certainly associated with these ‘external’ factors, true happiness is quite different.

To be truly happy, a person’s sense of contentment with their life needs to come from within (Puff, 2018). In other words, real happiness is internal.

There are a few features that characterize ‘true’ (or real) happiness. The first is acceptance . A truly happy individual accepts reality for what it is, and what’s more, they actually come to love ‘what is’ (Puff, 2018).

This acceptance allows a person to feel content. As well as accepting the true state of affairs, real happiness involves accepting the fact that change is inevitable (Puff, 2018). Being willing to accept change as part of life means that truly happy people are in a position to be adaptive.

A state of real happiness is also reflected by a person having an understanding of the transience of life (Puff, 2018). This is important because understanding that in life, both good and ‘bad’ are only short-lived means that truly happy individuals have an understanding that ‘this too shall pass’.

Finally, another aspect of real happiness is an appreciation of the people in an individual’s life. (Puff, 2018). Strong relationships characterize people who are truly ‘flourishing’.

Most people would say that, if they could, they would like to be happy. As well as being desirable, happiness is both important and valuable.

Happy people have better social and work relationships (Conkle, 2008).

In terms of career, happy individuals are more likely to complete college, secure employment, receive positive work evaluations from their superiors, earn higher incomes, and are less likely to lose their job – and, in case of being laid off, people who are happy are re-employed more quickly (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

Positive emotions also precede and promote career success (Lyubomirsky, 2018). Happy workers are less likely to burn out, be absent from work and quit their job (Lyubomirsky, 2018). Further on in this article, the relationship between happiness and productivity will be explored more thoroughly.

It has also been found that people who are happy contribute more to society (Conkle, 2008). There is also an association between happiness and cooperation – those who are happy are more cooperative (Kesebir & Diener, 2008). They are also more likely to display ethical behavior (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

Perhaps the most important reason to have true happiness in life is that it is linked to longevity. True happiness is a significant predictor of a longer, healthier life (Conkle, 2008).

It is not only the effects of happiness that benefit individuals. Whole countries can flourish too – according to research, nations that are rated as happier also score more highly on generalized trust, volunteerism and democratic attitudes (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

However, as well as these objective reasons why happiness is important, happiness also brings with it some positive experiences and feelings. For example, true happiness is related to feelings of meaning and purpose (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

It is also associated with a sense of fulfillment, plus a feeling of achievement that is attained through actively striving for, and making progress towards, valuable goals (Kesebir & Diener, 2008).

Interestingly, objective life circumstances (demographic details) only account for 8% – 15% of the variance in happiness (Kesebir & Diener, 2008). So what causes true happiness? Kesebir and Diener (2008) identified five sources of happiness:

Wealth is the first cause of happiness. Studies have shown a significant positive correlation between wealth and happiness. It is the case that having enough (i.e. adequate) money is necessary for happiness but is not sufficient to cause happiness. Money gives people freedom, and having enough money enables individuals to meet their needs – e.g. housing, food, and health-care.

Satisfaction with income has been shown to be related to happiness (Diener, 1984). However, money is not the guarantee of happiness – consider lottery winners. Whilst it is necessary to have sufficient money this alone will not cause happiness. So, what else is a source of happiness?

Having friends and social relationships has been shown to be a leading cause of happiness. Humans are primarily social beings and have a need for social connection.

A sense of community is associated with life satisfaction (Diener, 1984). Making and keeping friends is positively correlated with wellbeing. Aristotle (2000) stated that “no one would choose to live without friends, even if he had all the other goods” (p. 143).

In fact, the association between friendship/social support and happiness has been supported by empirical research. Furthermore, being satisfied with family life and marriage is the key to subjective wellbeing (Diener, 1984).

Another source of happiness is religion . While not true universally, religion has been associated with greater happiness. Positive effects have been found with taking part in religious services.

Having a strong religious affiliation has also been shown to be of benefit. Engaging in prayer, and having a relationship with God is also related to greater happiness.

Finally, a large determinant of happiness is personality . Research supports the fact that individual differences in how a person responds both to events and also to other people have an impact on the levels of a person’s happiness.

Lykken & Tellegen (1996) found that stable temperamental tendencies (those that are inherited genetically) contribute up to 50% in the total variability in happiness. This research found that many personality factors – extraversion, neuroticism – as well as self-esteem , optimism , trust , agreeableness, repressive defensiveness, a desire for control, and hardiness all play a part in how happy a person is.

We can, to a certain extent, determine how happy we feel. Kane (2017) has come up with 15 ways in which happiness can be increased:

1. Find joy in the little things

Savoring ordinary moments in everyday life is a skill that can be learned (Tartarkovsky, 2016). For most of us, we spend so much time thinking about things we’re not currently even doing! This can make us unhappy.

Happiness can, in fact, be predicted by where our minds wander to when we’re not focused on the present. By appreciating the simple things in life, we foster positive emotions…from admiring a beautiful flower to enjoying a cup of tea, finding joy in the little things is associated with increased happiness.

2. Start each day with a smile

It sounds easy, but smiling is associated with feeling happy. Beginning the day on a positive note can vastly improve wellbeing.

3. Connect with others

As mentioned in the previous section, having friendship and social support is definitely a source of happiness. So, to create more happy moments in life, step away from the desk and initiate a conversation with a work colleague, or send an SMS to someone you have not seen for a while. Take opportunities to interact with other people as they arise.

4. Do what you’re most passionate about

Using your strengths and finding an activity to engage in which leads to ‘flow’ has been identified as an enduring pathway to happiness. Being completely engaged in an activity is termed ‘flow’. What constitutes an experience of flow?

To begin with, the task needs to require skill but not be too challenging (Tartarkovsky, 2016). It should have clear goals and allow you to completely immerse yourself in what you’re doing so your mind doesn’t wander (Tartarkovsky, 2016). It should completely absorb your attention and give a sense of being ‘in the zone’ (Tartarkovsky, 2016). Perhaps the easiest way to identify a flow experience is that you lose track of time.

By doing what you’re most passionate about, you are more likely to use your strengths and find a sense of flow .

5. Count your blessings and be thankful

Gratitude is known to increase happiness. Gratitude has been defined as having an appreciation for what you have, and being able to reflect on that (Tartarkovsky, 2016). Gratitude creates positive emotions, enhances relationships and is associated with better health (Tartarkovsky, 2016).

Examples of ways to engage in gratitude include writing a gratitude journal, or express appreciation – such as, send a ‘thank you’ card to someone.

6. Choose to be positive and see the best in every situation

Taking a ‘glass half full’ attitude to life can certainly enhance feelings of happiness. Finding the positives in even difficult situations helps to foster positive affect. As one psychologist from Harvard Medical School, Siegel, said “relatively small changes in our attitudes can yield relatively big changes in our sense of wellbeing” (Tartarkovsky, 2016).

7. Take steps to enrich your life

A great way to develop a happier life is to learn something new. By being mentally active and developing new skills, this can promote happiness. For example, learn a musical instrument, or a foreign language, the sky’s the limit!

8. Create goals and plans to achieve what you want most

Striving for things we really want can make us feel happy, provided the goals are realistic. Having goals gives life purpose and direction, and a sense of achievement.

9. Live in the moment

Though easier said than done, a helpful way to create happy moments in life is to live for the moment – not to ruminate about the past, or to focus on the future. Staying in the ‘here and now’ can help us feel happier.

10. Be good to yourself

Treat yourself as well as you would treat a person whom you love and care about. Showing self-compassion can lead to happy moments and improve overall wellbeing.

11. Ask for help when you need it

Seeking help may not immediately come to mind when considering how to create happy moments. However, reaching out for support is one way to achieve happiness. As the old adage says “a problem shared is a problem halved”.

Having someone help you is not a sign of weakness. Rather, by asking for help, you are reducing the burden of a problem on yourself.

12. Let go of sadness and disappointment

Negative emotions can compromise one’s sense of happiness, especially if a person ruminates about what ‘could have been’. Whilst everyone feels such emotions at times, holding onto feelings of sadness and disappointment can really weigh a person down and prevent them from feeling happy and content.

13. Practice mindfulness

The positive effects of practicing mindfulness are widespread and numerous, including increasing levels of happiness. There is lots of material on this blog about mindfulness and its’ positive effects. Mindfulness is a skill and, like any skill, it can be learned. Learning to be mindful can help a person become happier.

14. Walk in nature

Exercise is known to release endorphins, and as such engaging in physical activity is one way to lift mood and create happy moments. Even more beneficial than simply walking is to walk in nature, which has been shown to increase happiness.

15. Laugh, and make time to play

Laughter really is the best medicine! Having a laugh is associated with feeling better. Also, it is beneficial for the sense of wellbeing not to take life too seriously. Just as children find joy in simple pleasures, they also love to play. Engaging in ‘play’ – activities done purely for fun – is associated with increased happiness.

Philosophers believe that happiness is not by itself sufficient to achieve a state of wellbeing, but at the same time, they agree that it is one of the primary factors found in individuals who lead a ‘good life’ (Haybron, 2011).

What then, are reasons to be happy from a philosophical perspective… what contributes to a person living a ‘good life’? This can also be understood as a person having ‘psychosocial prosperity’ (Haybron, 2011).

• One reason why a person can feel a sense of happiness is if they have been treated with respect in the last day (Haybron, 2011). How we are treated by others contributes to our overall wellbeing. Being treated with respect helps us develop a sense of self-worth.
• Another reason to feel happy is if one has family and friends they can rely on and count on in times of need (Haybron, 2011). Having a strong social network is an important component of happiness.
• Perhaps a person has learned something new. They may take this for granted, however, learning something new actually contributes to our psychosocial prosperity (Haybron, 2011).
• From a philosophical perspective, a reason to be happy is a person having the opportunity to do what they do best (Haybron, 2011). Using strengths for the greater good is one key to a more meaningful life (Tartarkovsky, 2016). As an example, a musician can derive happiness by creating music and a sports-person can feel happy by training or participating in competitions. Meeting our potential also contributes to wellbeing.
• A final reason to be happy from a philosophical perspective is a person having the liberty to choose how they spend their time (Haybron, 2011). This is a freedom to be celebrated. Being autonomous can contribute to a person living their best life.

Many of us spend a lot of time with our families. However, as much we love our partners, children, siblings, and extended families, at times family relationships can be fraught with challenges and problems. Nonetheless, it is possible for us to find happiness in family life by doing some simple, yet effective things suggested by Mann (2007):

• Enjoy your family’s company
• Exchange stories – for example, about what your day was like in the evening
• Make your marriage, or relationship, the priority
• Take time to eat meals together as a family
• Enjoy simply having fun with one another
• Make sure that your family and its needs come before your friends
• Limit number of extra-curricular activities
• Develop family traditions and honor rituals
• Aim to make your home a calm place to spend time
• Don’t argue in front of children
• Don’t work excessively
• Encourage siblings to get along with one another
• Have family ‘in-jokes’
• Be adaptable
• Communicate, including active listening

Take time to appreciate your family, and focus on the little things you can do to find happiness in family life.

The aim of any workplace is to have productive employees. This leads to the question – can happiness increase productivity? The results are unequivocal!

Researchers Boehm and Lyubomirsky define a ‘happy worker’ as one who frequently experiences positive emotions such as joy, satisfaction, contentment, enthusiasm, and interest (Oswald, Proto & Sgroi, 2009).

They conducted longitudinal as well as experimental studies, and their research clearly showed that people who could be classified as ‘happy’ were more likely to succeed in their careers. Amabile et al. (2005) also found that happiness results in greater creativity.

Why are happy workers more productive?

It has been suggested that the link between positive mood and work appears to be mediated by intrinsic motivation (that is, performing a task due to internal inspiration rather than external reasons) (Oswald et al., 2009). This makes sense because if one is feeling more joyful, the person is more likely to find their work meaningful and intrinsically rewarding.

It has been found by some experimental studies that happiness raises productivity. For example, research has shown that the experience of positive affect means that individuals change their allocation of time to completing more interesting tasks, but still manage to maintain their performance for the less interesting tasks (Oswald et al., 2009).

Other research has reported that positive affect influences memory recall and the likelihood of altruistic actions. However, much of this research has taken place in laboratory sessions where participation was unpaid. Which certainly leads to the obvious question… does happiness actually increase productivity in a true employment situation?

Oswald and colleagues (2009) did some research with very clear results on the relationship between happiness and productivity. They conducted two separate experiments.

The first experiment included 182 participants from the University of Warwick. The study involved some participants watching a short video clip designed to try and increase levels of happiness, and then completing a task which they were paid for in terms of both questions answered and accuracy. The participants who watched the video showed significantly greater productivity.

Most interestingly, however, 16 individuals did not display increased happiness after watching the movie clip, and these people did not show the same increase in productivity! Thus, this experiment certainly supported the notion that an increase in productivity can be linked to happiness.

Oswald and colleagues also conducted a second study which involved a further 179 participants who had not taken part in the first experiment. These individuals reported their level of happiness and were subsequently asked whether they had experienced a ‘bad life event’ (which was defined as bereavement or illness in the family) in the last two years.

A statistically significant effect was found… experiencing a bad life event, which was classified by the experts as ‘happiness shocks’ was related to lower levels of performance on the task.

Examining the evidence certainly makes one thing clear: happiness is certainly related to productivity both in unpaid and paid tasks. This has tremendous implications for the work-force and provides an impetus for working towards happier employees.

According to the Belonging Hypothesis put forth by psychologists Baumeister and Leary in 1995, human beings have an almost universal, fundamental human need to have a certain degree of interaction with others and to form relationships.

Indeed, people who are lonely have an unmet need to belong (Mellor, Stokes, Firth, Hayashi & Cummins, 2008). Loneliness has been found in a plethora of research to have a very negative effect on psychological wellbeing, and also health (Kim, 1997).

What about ‘happiness’? In other words, can loneliness also have an impact on life satisfaction?

There is evidence to suggest that loneliness does affect life satisfaction. Gray, Ventis, and Hayslip (1992) conducted a study of 60 elderly people living in the community. Their findings were clear: the aged person’s sense of isolation, and loneliness , explained the variation in life satisfaction (Gray et al., 1992).

Clearly, lonely older persons were less satisfied with their lives overall. In other research, Mellor and colleagues (2008) found that individuals who were less lonely had higher ratings of life satisfaction.

It may be assumed that only older people are prone to feeling isolated and lonely, however, an interesting study by Neto (1995) looked at satisfaction with life among second-generation migrants.

The researchers studied 519 Portuguese youth who was actually born in France. The study found that loneliness had a clear negative correlation with the satisfaction with life expressed by the young people (Neto, 1995). Indeed, along with the perceived state of health, loneliness was the strongest predictor of satisfaction with life (Neto, 1995).

Therefore, yes, loneliness affects life satisfaction. Loneliness is associated with feeling less satisfied with one’s life, and, presumably, less happy overall.

17 Exercises To Increase Happiness and Wellbeing

Add these 17 Happiness & Subjective Well-Being Exercises [PDF] to your toolkit and help others experience greater purpose, meaning, and positive emotions.

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Perhaps you have a desire to understand this topic further… great! Here are some books that you can read to further your understanding:

• Exploring Happiness: From Aristotle to brain science – S. Bok (2010) ( Amazon )
• Nicomachean ethics – Aristotle (2000). R Crisp, ed. ( Amazon )
• What is this thing called happiness? – F. Feldman (2010) ( Amazon )
• Authentic happiness: Using the new Positive Psychology to realize your potential for lasting fulfillment – M. Seligman (2004) ( Amazon )
• Philosophy of happiness: A theoretical and practical examination – M. Janello (2014) ( Amazon )
• Happiness: A Philosopher’s guide – F. Lenoir (2015) ( Amazon )

I don’t know about you but, whilst exploring the philosophy of happiness is fascinating, it can be incredibly overwhelming too. I hope that I have managed to simplify some of the ideas about happiness so that you have a better understanding of the nature of happiness and what it means to live a ‘good life’.

Philosophy can be complex, but if you can take one message from this article it is that it is important and worthwhile for humans to strive for wellbeing and ‘true happiness’. Whilst Aristotle argued that ‘eudaimonia’ (happiness) cannot be achieved until the end of one’s life, tips in this article show that each of us has the capacity to create happy moments each and every day.

What can you do today to embrace the ‘good life’? What ideas do you have about happiness – what does real happiness look like for you? What are your opinions as to what the philosophy of happiness in life means?

This article can provide a helpful resource for understanding more about the nature of happiness, so feel free to look back at it down the track. I would love to hear your thoughts on this fascinating topic!

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Happiness Exercises for free .

• Amabile, T. M., Basade, S. G., Mueller, J. S., & Staw, B. M. (2005). Affect and creativity at work. Administrative Science Quarterly, 50 , 367-403.
• Aristotle (2000). Nicomachean Ethics . R. Crisp (ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
• Aristotle (2004). Nicomachean Ethics . Hugh Treddenick (ed.). London: Penguin.
• Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117 , 498 – 529.
• Conkle, A. (2008). Serious research on happiness. Association for Psychological Science . Retrieved from https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observe/serious-research-on-happiness
• Danner, D., Snowdon, D., & Friesen, W. (2001). Positive emotions in early life and longevity: Findings from the nun study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80 , 804 – 813.
• Diener, E. (1984). Subjective well-being. Psychological Bulletin, 95 , 542 – 575
• Gray, G. R., Ventis, D. G., & Hayslip, B. (1992). Socio-cognitive skills as a determinant of life satisfaction in aged persons. The International Journal of Aging & Human Development , 35, 205 – 218.
• Haybron, D. (2011). Happiness. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/happiness
• Kane, S. (2017). 15 ways to increase your happiness. Psych Central. Retrieved from https://psychcentral.com/lib/15-ways-to-increase-your-happiness
• Kashdan, T. B., Biswas-Diener, R., & King, L. A. (2008). Reconsidering happiness: the costs of distinguishing between hedonics and eudaimonia. Journal of Positive Psychology, 3 , 219 – 233.
• Kesebir, P., & Diener, E. (2008). In pursuit of happiness: empirical answers to philosophical questions. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3 , 117-125.
• Kim, O. S. (1997). Korean version of the revised UCLA loneliness scale: reliability and validity test. Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing,? , 871 – 879.
• King, L. A., & Napa, C. K. (1998). What makes a life good? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75 , 156 – 165.
• Lykken, D., & Tellegan, A. (1996). Happiness is a stochastic phenomenon. Psychological Science, 7 , 186-189.
• Lyubomirsky, S. (2018). Is happiness a consequence or cause of career success? Psychology Today . Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/how-happiness/201808/is-happiness-consequence-or-cause-career-success
• Mann, D. (2007). 15 secrets of happy families. Web MD. Retrieved from https://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/15-secrets-to-have-a-happy-family
• Mellor, D., Stokes, M., Firth, L., Hayashi, Y. & Cummins, R. (2008). Need for belonging, relationship satisfaction, loneliness and life satisfaction. Personality and Individual Differences, 45 , 213 – 218.
• Neto, F. (1995). Predictors of satisfaction with life among second generation migrants. Social Indicators Research, 35 , 93-116.
• Oswald, A. J., Proto, E., & Sgroi, D. (2009). Happiness and productivity, IZA Discussion Papers, No. 4645, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10419/35451
• Plato (1999). The Symposium . Walter Hamilton (ed). London: Penguin Classics
• Puff, R. (2018). The pitfalls to pursuing happiness. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/meditation-modern-life/201809/the-pitfalls-pursuing-happiness
• Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development and wellbeing. American Psychologist, 55 , 68 – 78.
• Ryff, C. D., & Singer, B. (1996). Psychological wellbeing: meaning, measurement, and implications for psychotherapy research. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 65 , 14 – 23.
• Tartarkovsky, M. (2016). Five pathways to happiness. Psych Central. Retrieved from https://psychcentral.com/lib/five-pathways-to-happiness
• The Pursuit of Happiness (2018). Aristotle. Retrieved from https://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/aristotle
• Waterman, A. S. (1990). The relevance of Aristotle’s conception of eudaimonia for the psychological study of happiness. Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 10 , 39 – 44
• Waterman, A. S. (1993). Two conceptions of happiness: Contrasts of personal expressiveness (eudaimonia) and hedonic enjoyment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64 , 678 – 691.

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Happiness according to aristotle.

Citation with persistent identifier: Reece, Bryan C. “Happiness According to Aristotle.”  CHS Research Bulletin  7 (2019). http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hlnc.essay:ReeceB.Happiness_According_to_Aristotle.2019

Aristotle thinks that questions about how we should live as individuals and as communities must be answered with reference to a more fundamental question: What is the happy life for a human being? This question about happiness thus holds the key for the entire Aristotelian system of moral and political philosophy. Unfortunately, while the centrality of Aristotle’s theory of happiness is uncontroversial, there is no agreement about the content of his theory. Particularly controversial are his remarks on the relationship between, and especially the relative importance of, theoretical and practical activity in the ideal human life. I here give an outline sketch of a new interpretation of Aristotle’s remarks on this relationship and its ramifications for human happiness.

How should we live? Aristotle proposes to address this fundamental philosophical question by giving interrelated answers to two further questions: What kinds of activities are the best expressions of distinctively human identity? What is the proper balance of theoretical and practical activity in the ideal human life?

Aristotle’s answers have generated abiding interest, but also lingering puzzlement. He thinks that humans are distinctively rational, having the ability to reason theoretically and practically. The best activities for them to perform, and therefore the activities that constitute their happiness (which Aristotle thinks is itself an activity), are virtuous (excellent) rational activities ( Nicomachean Ethics 1.7, 1098 a 16–17): manifestations of reliable practical dispositions like courage, justice, generosity, and self-control, which are exercises of practical wisdom, as well as of reliable theoretical dispositions such as insightfulness, understanding, and theoretical wisdom. The manifestation of theoretical wisdom ( sophia ) turns out to be especially important for Aristotle. He says that this activity, theoretical contemplation ( theôria ), is what human happiness is ( NE 10.8, 1178 b 32). This is surprising, for if human happiness simply consists in theoretical contemplation, we might well wonder what role Aristotle envisions for the practical activities to which he devotes far more space in his ethical and political works than he does to contemplation.

Interpreters have struggled with the problem of reconciling Aristotle’s assignment of preeminent status in his theory of happiness to theoretical contemplation and the natural thought, encouraged by the flow of his discussions of virtuous behavior, that practical activities are permissible and valuable features of happy human lives. [1] I call this ‘the Standard Problem of Happiness.’ But there is an even more difficult version of this interpretive problem, which I call ‘the Hard Problem of Happiness.’ That problem is to explain how Aristotle could have thought that happiness is theoretical contemplation while also affirming that a reliable pattern of virtuous practical activity is non-optional and not coherently regrettable for happy humans. I here offer a very brief outline of my way of addressing this problem. [2]

A major obstacle to solving the Hard Problem is an assumption about the relationship between theoretical wisdom, which is manifested in theoretical contemplation, and practical wisdom, which is manifested in virtuous practical activities. The standard view is that Aristotle thinks that human beings can have and reliably manifest theoretical wisdom without having and reliably manifesting practical wisdom. That view is based on a passage apparently claiming that two pre-Socratic philosophers, Anaxagoras and Thales, had theoretical but not practical wisdom ( NE 6.7, 1141 b 2–16). The evidential value of this passage fades away on closer inspection. It is a report of others’ opinions that Aristotle does not fully endorse, but the appeal of which he explains. Thus, the purported textual evidence for the standard view does not support it. In fact, Aristotle gives strong reasons for thinking that having and reliably manifesting practical wisdom is necessary for having and reliably manifesting theoretical wisdom: only the continual, reliable exercise of practical wisdom, in activities that express such virtues as self-control and justice, makes it behaviorally feasible for embodied, socially situated, choice-making beings like us to develop and exercise theoretical wisdom. This means that a life of theoretical contemplation, in Aristotle’s strict sense, cannot be successfully lived without the level of virtuous public engagement that practical wisdom dictates in each circumstance. This interpretation solves a major problem for the standard view: it is on that view, wrongly, an open question whether any particular instance of theoretical contemplation is performed in the right way, at the right time, and for the right reasons. One who is a contemplator in Aristotle’s strict sense also has practical wisdom, and practical wisdom guarantees that one reliably chooses to act in the right way, at the right time, and for the right reasons.

This interpretation requires, as any solution to the Hard Problem does, that theoretical contemplation and virtuous practical activities are included in one and the same happy life. But Aristotle appears to claim at NE 10. 7, 1178 a 2 – 10. 8, 1178 a 14 that there are two kinds of happy life: one in accordance with theoretical contemplation, the other with virtuous practical activity. This claim is notoriously problematic. Properly interpreted, though, Aristotle does not here distinguish between two kinds of happiness, but rather between two ways of being proper to human beings that apply within one and the same happy life. [3] Theoretical contemplation is proper to humans in one way, virtuous practical activity in another.

But many interpreters see a problem for the idea that theoretical contemplation is proper to human beings: Aristotle also says that divine beings contemplate ( Metaph . 12.7, 1072 b 13–30, NE 10.8, 1178 b 7–32). [4] It would initially appear, then, that Aristotle is committed both to affirming and to denying that theoretical contemplation is proper to humans. However, careful scrutiny of his descriptions of the nature of divine and human contemplation reveals them to be type-distinct activities. On his view, human contemplation, but not divine contemplation, is a manifestation of theoretical wisdom, a virtue that includes two further virtues: a particular sort of nous , the developed capacity to grasp first principles intuitively as first principles, and epistêmê , the developed capacity for scientific demonstration from first principles ( NE 6.7, 1141 a 18–20, 6.3, 1139 b 31–32). So, Aristotle’s claim that divine beings contemplate does not conflict with his view that theoretical contemplation, understood as the manifestation of theoretical wisdom, is proper to human beings.

On the account so far sketched, theoretical contemplation and virtuous practical activities are necessary parts of human happiness, and only happy human beings engage in these activities. So, theoretical contemplation and virtuous practical activities are necessary parts of human happiness and are also unique to it. In short, they are proper to human happiness. But they are not each proper to human happiness in the same way. Theoretical contemplation is necessary for and unique to happiness as what happiness is , whereas virtuous practical activities are necessary and unique parts of happiness in a different, and secondary, way. Aristotle often distinguishes between primary and secondary ways of being proper: one is the essence ( ousia ) and the other is a unique, necessary property ( idion , pl. idia ). Aristotle relies on the theory on which this distinction between two ways of being proper is based in articulating his view of happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics , for he seeks an essence-specifying definition of human happiness from which the unique, necessary parts of happiness can be deduced. Theoretical contemplation is the essence of human happiness, the activity that makes it what it is. That is why Aristotle says that happiness is theoretical contemplation. (This addresses the first half of the Hard Problem.) Virtuous activities are unique, necessary properties of human happiness. Even though they are not what happiness is, Aristotle thinks that they are non-optional and non-regrettable parts of happiness. (This addresses the second half of the Hard Problem). It would be incoherent to wish that happiness did not require engaging in virtuous practical activities, just as it would be incoherent to wish that one were another sort of being without the features that follow from the human essence ( NE 9.4, 1166 a 20–22 and 8.7, 1159 a 5–12).

This solution to the Hard Problem shows Aristotle’s account of happiness to be a distinctive answer to the question of how we ought to balance theoretical and practical activity in our pursuit of the ideal human life.

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Gauthier, René Antoine. 1958. La Morale d’ Aristote. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Gigon, Olof. 1975. “Phronêsis und Sophia in der Nicomachischen Ethik des Aristoteles.” In Kephalaion: Studies in Greek Philosophy and its Continuation offered to Professor C. J. de Vogel , ed. Jaap Mansfeld and L. M. de Rijk, 91–104. Assen: Van Gorcum.

Gottlieb, Paula. 1994. “Aristotle on Dividing the Soul and Uniting the Virtues.” Phronesis 39:275–290.

Irwin, Terence. 1980. “The Metaphysical and Psychological Basis of Aristotle’s Ethics.” In Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics , ed. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, 35–53. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kenny, Anthony. 1992. Aristotle on the Perfect Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Keyt, David. 1983. “Intellectualism in Aristotle .” In Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy , vol. 2, ed. John P. Anton and Anthony Preus, 364–387. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Kosman, Aryeh. 2000. “ Metaphysics Λ 9: Divine Thought.” In Aristotle’s Metaphysics Lambda:    Symposium Aristotelicum , ed. Michael Frede and David Charles, 307–326. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kraut, Richard. 1989. Aristotle on the Human Good. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Laks, André. 2000. “ Metaphysics Λ 7.” In Aristotle’s Metaphysics Lambda: Symposium Aristotelicum , ed. Michael Frede and David Charles, 207–243. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lear, Gabriel Richardson. 2004. Happy Lives and the Highest Good: An Essay on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Natali, Carlo. 1989. La Saggezza di Aristotele. Naples: Bibliopolis.

Nightingale, Andrea Wilson. 2004. Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in its Cultural Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Price, Anthony W. 2011. Virtue and Reason in Plato and Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Reece, Bryan C. forthcoming. “Are There Really Two Kinds of Happiness in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics ?” Classical Philology.

Scott, Dominic. 1999. “Primary and Secondary Eudaimonia.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 73:225–242.

* My research on this topic has been generously supported by The Center for Hellenic Studies. I am grateful to everyone involved with the CHS, especially to Gregory Nagy, Mark Schiefsky, Richard Martin, and the library staff: Erika Bainbridge, Sophie Boisseau, Lanah Koelle, Michael Strickland, and Temple Wright.

[1] Many have offered interpretations of Aristotle’s remarks on practical and intellectual virtue, or their relationship to each other or to happiness. I list only a few here: (Annas 1993), (Aufderheide 2015), (Charles 2017), (Cooper 1975), (Devereux 1981), (Gauthier 1958), (Gigon 1975), (Gottlieb 1994), (Irwin 1980), (Kenny 1992), (Keyt 1983), (Kraut 1989), (Lear 2004), (Natali 1989), (Nightingale 2004), (Price 2011), (Scott 1999).

[2] The paragraphs that follow summarize parts of this research project that I drafted or revised during my fellowship at The Center for Hellenic Studies. The project as a whole is under contract with Cambridge University Press as a monograph called Aristotle on Happiness, Virtue, and Wisdom .

[3] I give a detailed defense of this interpretation in (Reece forthcoming).

[4] There are many who discuss the nature of divine contemplation, including (Kosman 2000) and (Laks 2000), as well as the problem that it initially appears to pose for Aristotle’s account of human happiness, including (Charles 2017), (Keyt 1983), (Kraut 1989, 312–319), and (Lear 2004, 189–193).

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Notes to Happiness

1. This article focuses on the standard division between descriptive and evaluative senses of ‘happiness’ (see also Feldman 2010, Sumner 1996). But that distinction may be challenged, or there might be evaluative elements in the “psychological” sense of ‘happiness’ even if it is not equivalent to well-being. For example, some argue that pleasure is itself partly an evaluative kind (e.g., Goldstein 1989). Phillips et al . have argued that the folk concept of happiness is be a mix of psychological and evaluative, drawing on a series of studies (Phillips, Misenheimer, et al . 2011; Phillips et al . 2017).

2. This claim holds only as a rough generalization, with some exceptions. Chekola 2007 and Murphy 2001, for instance, appear to use ‘happiness’ as a descriptive term for a life that is successful from the agent’s point of view. While there are other senses of ‘happiness’ and cognates, this article discusses only the main philosophically significant uses of ‘happiness’ and cognates; on other senses, see Davis 1981b, Goldstein 1973, Suikkanen 2011 and Thomas 1968. Readers should note that many philosophical works do not clearly distinguish the psychological and well-being notions, and it is not always clear how a given author employs the term. In some cases ‘happiness’ takes neither the psychological nor well-being meaning, and so it may be unclear how the discussion relates to broader philosophical debates such as those covered in this article. A further wrinkle is that there is a growing body of non-Western and cross-cultural work on happiness, and it is plausible that the philosophical landscape depicted in this article will need revision if it is to accommodate the diversity of human thinking about (or not thinking about, as the case may be) happiness and well-being. See, for example, a 2019 special issue on “Cross-Cultural Studies of Well-Being” assembled by Flanagan, Letourneau and Zhao, including Flanagan et al. 2019, Euler 2019 and Zhang 2019 among others; also, Joshanloo 2013, Joshanloo and Weijers 2019, Purcell 2014, and Samson 2019. The largest body of non-Western scholarship on happiness, usually in something like the well-being sense, engages with Asian philosophy and religion; e.g., Fraser 2013, Ho et al. 2014, Joshanloo 2014, Kim 2020, Luo 2018, Wong 2013, and Zhang 2019.

3. Possible examples of theories grounded in failures properly to distinguish these projects include Smart and Hare’s accounts, on which happiness is basically about one’s mental states; but it is also partly evaluative, in that (for example) we cannot properly call someone happy if we find her desires, pleasures, circumstances, etc. to be repulsive or otherwise undesirable (Hare 1963, Smart 1973; see also Nozick 1989). It is not clear what the point of such a concept would be, or what of substance—rather than merely linguistic usage—is at issue between such theories and other accounts of ‘happiness.’ While the main philosophical issues relate to matters of substance, it may sometimes be useful to pursue a linguistic approach focused on the meaning of “happiness.” For example, in a textbook surveying philosophical theories of happiness it might be desirable to cover the full range of philosophical work under that rubric, leaving it open whether the literature on ‘happiness’ concerns one, two, or more subject matters. A risk of that approach is that some commentators stipulate that their theories are not in competition with much of the literature on “happiness,” so that it would be misleading to suggest that, for example, Aristotle (in English translation) and Sumner disagree about the nature of happiness. Any apparent disagreement is purely verbal.

4. For some recent examples of articles on the well-being sense, see Angier 2015, Capuccino 2013, Cashen 2012, Kristjánsson 2010, 2012, 2018, and Vitrano 2010. Most historical work on “happiness,” at least in pre-modern philosophy, employs the well-being sense. Most empirical researchers employ the term in the psychological sense; for an apparent exception, see Seligman 2002, though he has lately shifted focus away from the term ‘happiness’ (Seligman 2011). For reviews of the philosophical literature, see Badhwar 2015, Den Uyl and Machan 1983, and the chapters in Section III of David et al. 2015. Accessible introductory texts include Mulnix and Mulnix 2015a. Recent anthologies of the philosophical literature include Cahn and Vitrano 2008 and Mulnix and Mulnix 2015b. Bortolotti 2009 and Snow and Trivigno 2014 are edited collections of new papers. An accessible collection of papers by philosophers and other researchers can be found in the Spring 2004 issue of Daedalus . An influential discussion of different happiness concepts, focusing mainly on the well-being notion, is Kraut 1979.

5. See, e.g., Blackson 2009; Brandt 1959, Brandt 1979, 1989, 1992; Campbell 1973; Carson 1978a, 1978b, 1979, 1981; Davis 1981b, 1981a; Ebenstein 1991; Feldman 2010; Griffin 1979, 1986; Kazez 2007; Mayerfeld 1996, 1999; Morris 2011; Sen 1987a; Sprigge 1987, 1991; Wilson 1968; Zamuner 2013. For a recent extended defense of hedonism about happiness, see Feldman 2010. Among psychologists, see e.g. Parducci 1995 and Kahneman 1999.

6. Variants of the life satisfaction view appear to include Barrow 1980, 1991, Benditt 1974, 1978, Brülde 2007, Buss 2004, Campbell 1973, Goldman 2016, 2019, Montague 1967, Mulligan 2016, Nozick 1989, Rescher 1972, 1980, Skidelsky 2017, Suikkanen 2011, Sumner 1996, 2000, Telfer 1980, and Von Wright 1963. While Goldman and Mulligan characterize happiness as an emotion, the relevant emotion appears to constitute an attitude of life satisfaction. Those making life satisfaction central or identical to well-being, or “happiness” in the well-being sense, appear to include (in addition to some of the aforementioned authors) Almeder 2000, Kekes 1982, 1988, 1992, McFall 1989, Meynell 1969, Scruton 1975, Tatarkiewicz 1976, Thomas 1968, Tiberius 2008, Tiberius and Plakias 2010, Vitrano 2010. Empirical researchers often identify life satisfaction and happiness—notably, Veenhoven 1984, 1997.

7. Emotional state theories seem to have become the most common view in the last decade or so. Authors who appear to endorse some form of this approach include Badhwar 2014, Becker 2012, Besser-Jones 2013, Haybron 2005, 2008b, Kauppinen 2013, Klausen 2015, 2019, de Lazari-Radek and Singer 2014, May 2015, Raibley 2011, Rodogno 2016, Rossi 2018, Rossi and Tappolet 2016, Sizer 2010, Tiberius 2018, Višak 2015, and possibly Bok 2010b. A prominent contribution from the lay literature is Ricard 2006. For discussions of particular emotions and moods in the context of happiness or well-being, see Griswold 1996 on tranquility and Roberts 2019 on joy. Because hedonistic and emotional state theories have seldom been distinguished, some ostensibly “hedonistic” approaches to happiness might more accurately be characterized as emotional state views. Among empirical researchers, for instance, affect-based approaches to happiness are typically described as hedonistic, yet normally focus on moods and emotions rather than (e.g.) sensory pleasures and pains.

8. The moniker “affect-based” is problematic given that some variants of hedonism conceive of pleasure in non-affective terms, for instance as an attitude of liking or being pleased, where this attitude need not involve affect (e.g., Feldman 2004, 2010). It is possible that such theories, which bear similarities to the life satisfaction view, should be distinguished from more familiar varieties of hedonism.

9. On the significance of life satisfaction for well-being research, see Alexandrova 2005, 2008, Tiberius and Plakias 2010.

10. See Alexandrova 2005, 2008, Tiberius 2006, Tiberius and Plakias 2010, Suikkanen 2011.

11. For recent discussions of measurement issues, see, e.g., Adler 2019, Alexandrova 2017, Alexandrova and Haybron 2016, Angner 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, de Boer 2014, Cohen Kaminitz forthcoming, Fleurbaey and Blanchet 2013, Hausman 2010, Haybron 2016, OECD 2013, White 2013, Skidelsky 2014, Stiglitz et al. 2009, van der Deijl 2016a, 2016b, 2017, Wodak 2019, Wren-Lewis 2014.

12. See, e.g., Krueger, Kahneman, et al . 2009.

13. See, e.g., Haybron 2007, Schwitzgebel and Hurlburt 2007, Schwitzgebel 2008, 2011, Goldstein 1981, 2002.

14. Good examples can be found in the Gallup studies discussed in section 3.3 (Kahneman and Deaton 2010; Diener, Ng, et al . 2010). These studies roughly assess both life satisfaction and emotional state, using a suite of inquiries about particular types of affect to get at the latter. Compare the World Values Survey, which uses a “happiness” question and a “life satisfaction” question (e.g., Inglehart, Foa, et al . 2008). Straightforwardly hedonistic measures of subjective well-being are less common, one sign being whether physical pain is assessed, but seem to figure most prominently in time-use studies.

15. For example, Ryff 1989, Waterman 1993, Ryan and Deci 2001, Keyes 2002, Seligman 2002, Seligman 2011. Two excellent collections of papers on eudaimonic psychology, including both empirical and philosophical contributions, are Vittersø 2016 and Waterman 2013.

16. For scholarly reviews of this literature, see David et al. 2013, Diener et al. 2018a, 2018b. A more extensive list of suggested readings to get started on various aspects of the literature on happiness and well-being is maintained on the webpages of the Happiness and Well-Being Project (see the link in the Other Internet Resources). Philosophical engagement with empirical research on happiness has picked up considerably in recent years, monographs including, e.g., Alexandrova 2017, Badhwar 2014, Besser 2014, Bishop 2015, Bok 2010b, Feldman 2010, Flanagan 2007, Kenny and Kenny 2006, Sumner 1996, Tiberius 2008, 2014, Wren-Lewis 2019. There has also been some collaborative work on happiness between philosophers and empirical researchers; for instance, Ahuvia et al. 2015, Intelisano et al. 2019, Oishi et al., and other teams funded by the Happiness and Well-Being Project (again, see Other Internet Resources). In experimental philosophy, recent studies include Phillips et al. 2011, 2014, 2017, Robbins et al. 2018, as well as the experience machine studies cited below.

17. For reviews of this literature, see Frederick and Loewenstein 1999, Lucas 2008, Luhmann and Intelisano 2018.

18. See, e.g., Diener, Lucas, et al . 2006, Lucas, Clark, et al . 2004a, 2004b, Lucas 2008, Diener 2008, Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, et al . 2005, Easterlin 2003, Easterlin 2005, Inglehart and Klingemann 2000, Inglehart, Foa, et al . 2008, Headey 2007, 2008, Luhmann and Intelisano 2018.

19. Heritability figures must be read with considerable caution: among other things, they reflect only the amount of variation within the studied population that can be explained by genes, roughly speaking. If your subjects live in relatively homogeneous environments, heritability findings will increase. Since twin studies tend not to include twins separated and placed in radically different environments—say, contemporary Manhattan versus San Bushmen, or 19 th century versus contemporary Dutchmen—they often overstate the heritability of traits relative to the full spectrum of human societies, and correspondingly understate the role of environment. For philosophical discussion, see Bishop 2015, Sosis 2012, 2014.

20. E.g., Biswas-Diener, Vittersø, et al . 2005, Biswas-Diener 2018, Graham 2009, Diener and Suh 2000, Inglehart and Klingemann 2000, Inglehart, Foa, et al . 2008. For a striking informal account of a hunter-gatherer society, the Pirahã, see Everett 2009. What these findings show about well-being depends on the importance of happiness for it (see section 4). Note that high happiness can coexist with low longevity, which is clearly important on most views of well-being. For this reason, happiness measures may be unable to tell the whole story about well-being even if we accept a mental state view of well-being. For an effort rectify this limitation within happiness research, see Veenhoven 2005.

21. For useful surveys and lists, see Myers and Diener 1995, Argyle 1999, 2002, Layard 2005, Bok 2010a, Diener et al. 2018, Jebb et al. 2020, and the annual World Happiness Reports starting with Helliwell et al. 2012. Philosophical discussions of the causes and correlates of happiness include, e.g., Ahuvia et al. 2015, Andreou 2010, Brülde 2014, Haybron 2013a, Lauinger 2015, Morris 2015, Setiya 2014, Tiberius 2017, Wren-Lewis 2019.

22. On the last, see, e.g., Kellert and Wilson 1995, Frumkin 2001, Haybron 2011, Capaldi et al. 2015, Lumber et al. 2017, Bosch and Bird 2018, Houlden et al. 2018.

23. Importantly, this study and the Stevenson and Wolfers study use log income instead of raw income, which substantially accounts for the stronger income-life satisfaction correlations than those found in earlier research. While neither metric is unambiguously superior, log income has the advantage of tracking proportional differences in income: a major question, for instance, is the impact of economic growth on happiness. For this purpose, the impact of, say, a five percent gain in income is more relevant than that of a $500 increase, which might represent a large gain for some, small for others.

24. For recent discussion of these and other doubts about the value of happiness, see Belliotti 2004, 2013.

25. Recent years have seen lively debate about the experience machine case. Some examples include Bramble 2016, Hawkins 2016, Kraut 2018, Lin 2015, Stevenson 2018, and Weijers 2011. Empirical studies of lay intuitions include De Brigard 2010, Hindricks and Douven 2018, Weijers 2014.

26. See, e.g., Elster 1983, Millgram 2000, Nussbaum 2000, Sen 1987b, 2009, van der Deijl 2017b, Mitchell 2018.

27. The consensus ends, however, on the question of what virtue entails. Indeed, skeptics about (conventional) morality such as Nietzsche might hold that virtue—acting well—entails immorality, at least relative to conventional standards of morality (see also, e.g., the discussion of “Gaugin” in Williams 1981, and “Admirable Immorality” in Slote 1983). This is one reason to frame the view broadly, in terms of virtue, rather than morality. Hurka’s excellent, accessible discussion of the good life may seem to reject the priority of virtue, but his treatment of virtue as a “lesser” good concerns its contribution to the sum of intrinsic value in a life, not the importance of doing the right thing (Hurka 2010).

28. Besides authentic happiness theories, there have been a number of other recent proposals to incorporate happiness as one among other constituents of well-being, e.g., Bishop 2012, 2015, Fletcher 2013, Jayawickreme and Pawelski 2013, MacLeod 2015, Raibley 2012, 2013, Rodogno 2016, Rossi and Tappolet 2016. Badhwar 2014 notably incorporates an emotional state conception of happiness in an Aristotelian account of well-being as “happiness in an objectively worthwhile life.”

29. Other authors who have expressed doubts about the unity of well-being include Griffin 2000, 2007, Raz 1986, 2004, Scanlon 1999, Alexandrova 2017.

30. Recent philosophical discussions of norms governing the proper pursuit of happiness include Badhwar 2008, 2014, Beck and Stroop 2014, Haybron 2013b, Kahane 2012, Spahn 2015, Tiberius 2008, Walker 2011.

31. A sampling of other recent philosophical work on human limitations in the pursuit of happiness includes Angner 2016, Besser 2013, Billon 2016, Paul 2014. A comprehensive review of the empirical literature in this area is Haybron 2008b.

32. While most policy discussion embeds happiness metrics such as life satisfaction or emotional well-being in a broader approach that considers other outcomes as well, there is significant support for a narrower focus on happiness, notably in Layard 2005 and Clark et al. 2018. Good sources on the policy debate include the World Happiness Reports published annually since Helliwell et al. 2012, annual reports from the Global Happiness Council from 2018 onward, resources available through the OECD , Stiglitz et al. 2009, Stiglitz et al. 2019, Diener et al. 2009, Adler and Fleurbaey 2015. Philosophical discussions include, among others, Adler 2019, Alexandrova 2018, Angner 2009, Austin 2015, Bagaric and McConvill 2005, Becker 2012, Bok 2010a, Fleurbaey and Blanchet 2013, Hausman 2010, Haybron and Alexandrova 2013, Haybron and Tiberius 2015, Hersch 2015, 2020, Kenny and Kenny 2006, Metz 2014, Moller 2011, Nussbaum 2010, Singh and Alexandrova forthcoming, Sugden 2008, Trout and Buttar 2000, van der Rijt 2015, White 2013, Wren-Lewis 2013, and other sources noted below.

33. See, e.g., Trout 2005, Loewenstein and Haisley 2008, Thaler and Sunstein 2008, Trout 2009.

34. E.g., Ross and Nisbett 1991, Haidt 2001, Doris 2002, Doris 2009, Doris 2015, Christakis, Fowler, et al . 2009, Haybron 2014.

35. For worries about even this sort of paternalism, see Hausman and Welch 2009.

Copyright © 2020 by Dan Haybron < dan . haybron @ slu . edu >

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Happiness: A Very Short Introduction

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Happiness: A Very Short Introduction considers the true nature of happiness and the current thinking on the subject, from psychology to philosophy. What is happiness? Is it subjective or can we put an objective value on it? How can and should we pursue happiness? Happiness is an everyday term in our lives, and most of us strive to be happy, but defining happiness can be difficult. There are many diverse routes to happiness. How much of our view on what constitutes happiness is influenced by secular Western ideas on the contemporary pursuit of a good life?

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Cogut Institute for the Humanities

10. happiness in psychology and philosophy.

• Meeting Street

Meeting Street: Conversations in the Humanities

Podcast host Amanda Anderson explores topics of vital societal interest through conversations with scholars and writers whose voices have helped define issues and shape debates.

Is pleasure the measure of happiness? Does happiness make life meaningful? How does it factor in economic and political life?

The boom of contemporary research on happiness has been driven by psychologists, though historically philosophy has long examined the subject. What happens when philosophy and psychology enter into conversation?

While happiness may be found through a walk in the woods with a friend, happiness research also illuminates social and public issues ranging from social media to authoritarianism. In this episode of Meeting Street, psychologist Joachim Krueger and philosopher Bernard Reginster explore with host Amanda Anderson the factors that contribute to or impact happiness and the ways in which happiness and meaningfulness can diverge. They talk about the benefits of conducting and teaching happiness research together and discuss how collaboration could shed light on related topics like social status.

Music and production:   Jacob Sokolov-Gonzalez. Administrative support: Damien Mahiet and Gregory Kimbrell.

You can also listen to Meeting Street on Amazon Music , Apple Podcast , Google Podcast ,  Radio Public ,  Player FM ,  Spotify , and Stitcher .

Go to the show’s main page.

Amanda Anderson:  From the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University, this is Meeting Street. I’m Amanda Anderson, the show’s host and director of the institute. In today’s episode, I’m joined by two scholars — one, a social psychologist, and the other, a philosopher — who have several times partnered to teach a course here at Brown on the philosophy and psychology of happiness. The most recent iteration of the course was offered under the aegis of a collaborative humanities initiative that promotes research-based, team-taught courses on important cultural topics. The aim is to see what happens when a humanities perspective is brought into conversation with a disciplinary perspective outside of the humanities.

One striking fact about the boom in happiness research over the past couple of decades is that it has largely been driven by the field of psychology, a social science, even though historically philosophy, a core humanities discipline, has had much to say about the topic. So I’m very excited to speak with my two guests today. Let me now introduce them.

Joachim Krueger is professor of cognitive and behavioral sciences. He studies topics in social judgment and decision-making, such as self-perception, strategic interpersonal behavior, and inter-group relations. He has published widely on these research topics and also has a vibrant blog hosted by Psychology Today. His more occasional writings on happiness have been collected in the book The Quest for Happiness in 31 Essays , published in 2016.

Bernard Reginster is a professor in the philosophy department. His research areas include ethics and moral psychology in 19th-century European philosophy and psychoanalytic theory. He is the author of The Affirmation of Life , published in 2006, and The Will to Nothingness: An Essay on Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality, published in 2021. Bernard is also the founder and director of the Program for Ethical Inquiry at Brown. Joachim and Bernard, welcome to Meeting Street.

Joachim Krueger:  Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Bernard Reginster:  It’s great to be here, Amanda. Thank you for having us.

Amanda Anderson:  So, as I mentioned in the intro, the past few decades have seen a large increase in research on happiness, much of it within psychology, although ideas from the history of philosophy certainly exert an influence on happiness studies. Your course explores the question of happiness by means of an encounter between the two disciplines. Why do you think an approach that juxtaposes the two disciplinary frameworks of psychology and philosophy is important or useful? Joachim, as the psychologist, perhaps you could begin.

Joachim Krueger:  Yeah, thank you. It’s an encounter all right, both for the instructors and for the students. And it’s fun. And it’s also educational because disciplines have different modes of thinking and different paradigms and differences in how they do their scholarship, and we bring that into the same room in our course. So we can tell the students, we can share with the students what we’ve learned about the differences in our theoretical pre-commitments, conceptualization of the issues, and the methods that we use in our efforts to find answers to the questions that we care about.

Amanda Anderson:  Bernard, how would you answer the same question?

Bernard Reginster:  Well, I mean, I agree with what Joachim just said about the confrontation of different methods, different approaches, right? And I can give a specific example if you’d like. So one of the things that philosophers do is that they emphasize the importance of conceptual analysis. So they try to understand what the concept of happiness really is, what it covers, what it doesn’t cover, and so on and so forth.

But from the point of view of a psychologist — and I learned that of course by talking to Joachim about this — is that what philosophers first called conceptual analysis looks very much like armchair psychology, and perhaps we would be better served by a rigorous empirical investigation of what’s really going on in the minds of people who describe themselves as happy.

Well, as it turns out, on reflection, both of these approaches are equally indispensable. On the one hand, the empirical investigation of a topic like happiness is only going to be as good as the initial conceptualization that frames the hypothesis that guides the inquiry. If you ask the wrong questions, obviously the answers you get are not going to be very helpful. But on the other hand, if the empirical hypothesis your initial conceptualization supplied [is] not confirmed by the empirical inquiries, then your initial conceptualization probably missed something and you need to revise it.

The other thing that I want to say is that, precisely because, as you noted in your introduction, the study of happiness has been mostly done by empirical psychologists, it makes it incumbent on philosophers to find out what psychologists have to say and see whether the empirical investigations might in some way force us to revise our concept of happiness. One of the things that’s been very striking to me is the way in which the psychological study of happiness has made it necessary for philosophers to become very careful in the way in which they, so to speak, map out the conceptual territory.

So when psychologists study happiness, obviously they will by trade define it as a state of mind of one sort or another. So the main views here are that happiness is a preponderance of positive over negative affect, or happiness is a sense of satisfaction with your life, things of that nature. But in any event, they define it as a state of mind.

Now in philosophy, happiness has been used virtually as synonymous for the good life in the sense of the life that’s good for the person living it. As philosophers tend to talk about it, it’s been synonymous with wellbeing. But it’s a real question, when you think about it, whether all that matters to your life going well for you is that you be in a certain state of mind. OK. And so philosophers had already started to talk about this kind of issue, but the prevalence of psychological research has really put it front and center. Is being in a certain state of mind all that really matters to your life going well for you?

“ [I]n philosophy, happiness has been used virtually as synonymous for the good life in the sense of the life that’s good for the person living it. As philosophers tend to talk about it, it’s been synonymous with wellbeing. But it’s a real question, when you think about it, whether all that matters to your life going well for you is that you be in a certain state of mind [...] ”

Amanda Anderson:  Yes, let me press on this a little bit by asking Joachim what precisely are the different conceptions of happiness at play in happiness research? And what do you think some of the major contributions of happiness studies and positive psychology have been? I mean, Bernard has been stressing state of mind, or what we might call self-report, but one thing I would be really curious to hear is how happiness is conceived, apart from the question of whether or not the subject is saying that they feel happiness.

Joachim Krueger:  Right, yeah. So what we tell our students, we give them some distinctions that are heuristic and useful, but they’re not categorically true, but they’re helpful for us to think about the issues. And one distinction is between the normative and the descriptive, and we say that by and large philosophers tend to gravitate to normative questions, and normative has a feeling of “Now we have a fix on how things should be or what happiness really is.”

And psychologists tend to shy away from that because then you get to judge people. So if we have a normative standard, we can judge people — or ourselves: “Am I as happy as I should be, or am I thinking about happiness in the correct way?” And so we lay it out for the students that psychologists are empirically working on a descriptive game and philosophers on a normative game, but there is overlap and we need to talk to one another. But it’s not categorically 100% true because there are, of course, many psychological enterprises that are normative.

So for example, when we study judgment and decision-making or choice, we use normative models. So it’s not entirely descriptive and that’s the end of the story. And likewise in the study of happiness and subjective wellbeing, once we’ve discovered, or we have empirical and theoretical grounds, that certain things are better for us and our wellbeing, then we have one foot in the normative territory: “Should you be doing this? Shouldn’t you be exposing yourself more to nature and give pro-socially and hang out more with your friends, because we know it will be good for you?” So the descriptive and the normative are continually in a dance with one another, and we hope we make progress by dancing the dance and understanding where we’re headed.

“ [T]he descriptive and the normative are continually in a dance with one another, and we hope we make progress by dancing the dance and understanding where we’re headed. ”

Amanda Anderson:  Is part of what is at stake here between the normative and, let’s just say, the state of mind orientation competing temporal perspectives, where happiness can be the report of a state of mind in a kind of punctual sense, but the good life can only be known over the course of longer spans of time, or even perhaps the course of a life? I mean, I guess I would pose that question to Bernard.

Bernard Reginster:  When psychologists talk about happiness, they talk about a state of mind, but they tend to talk about a long-term state of mind. So a moment of pleasure does not happiness make, right? On one of the models there’s got to be a preponderance of pleasure over pain, presumably over a certain period of time. I mean, it doesn’t have to cover your entire life, but it has to cover a protracted period of it.

The other point I would make in connection to the previous discussion is that it may very well be that there is something that psychologists call happiness and that is in fact good for you. The question, and I guess it has something to do with the normative question, is that, while it’s very likely to be good for you, is that the only way in which your life can go well for you? Or is this what you should be aiming at? Or are there other things that you might, and perhaps should, aim at if you want to have a life that’s really going well for you?

Amanda Anderson:  Right. I mean, I think it comes down to value commitments, right? I mean, what are one’s primary value commitments? And certain forms of believing one’s life to be meaningful and important might not foreground feelings of pleasure and happiness. Joachim, did you want to speak to that?

Joachim Krueger:  Yeah, I haven’t really answered your question on the state of mind, and that’s the orientation that psychologists take. And again, by and large, that’s true, but not entirely. So it’s not entirely true that this is all — as psychologists — what we think of as states of mind. And some are fleeting, some are longer lasting, but at the end of the day, we want to integrate them and have a whole of how happy the life has been. It’s actually the case that in psychology there’s a long tradition of also talking about deeper psychological constructs that are not states of mind, but whatever it is that gives rise to the state of mind. And that, of course, we know from the study of attitudes.

So you may have a strong ecological attitude — wanting to be green and wanting to do the necessary things — and from time to time, at the right conditions, things will pop into consciousness. But we assume, from what we see in people’s behavior and what they tell us and how they seem to be feeling, that there’s a latent state that gives rise to it, and this latent state or entity we can’t really see. It’s a hypothetical construct that we use to explain what we do see. So in that sense, we have much more common ground with the philosophers who are particularly interested in the deep, the ontology, what is happiness aside from the phenomena that we get to experience and witness in everyday life.

Bernard Reginster:  Yeah, yeah. So to give you an example, I mean, one of the things that we discuss in the course is the question of whether the state of mind that is supposed to [be] considered happiness is an experiential state, a conscious experience, or something that underlies conscious experience,  that’s still a condition of the mind — something like emotional health, for example — that is manifest in experience, but is not simply reducible to it.

Amanda Anderson:  That’s very helpful. Joachim, what do you think made you particularly open to working with a humanities scholar on this particular topic?

Joachim Krueger:  It has a lot to do with how Bernard, my friend and colleague, approached me to collaborate on this. So he kicked in the door, but the door was half open anyway, because I’ve always felt in my scholarly work that interdisciplinary thinking and interdisciplinary contacts are vital for — actually for my own happiness. When thinking is fun, you look for inspiration, and one way to get inspired in scholarship is to look beyond the confines of your little silo or discipline. So I’ve always read widely. I’ve never taken a philosophy course in my life, but I’m self-educated — and then to see the opportunity to work with a liked and loved and respected colleague, and to bring that attitude of excitement and inspiration to the students, how could I have said no?

Amanda Anderson:  Bernard, what aspects of your own research or intellectual commitments or academic history drew you to this collaboration?

Bernard Reginster:  Well, first of all, I have one of my undergraduate degrees in psychology, so I already have a separate interest in it. I was also very struck by the increasing interaction between philosophy, my discipline, and the social sciences and how that interaction proved to be very fruitful. And then, I discovered, and that was a bit unexpected, that in fact Joachim is a kind of a closet philosopher himself. So even though he never took a philosophy [course] in his life, he clearly has a bent towards it. So that really helped, but the interaction between the two disciplines can be amazingly fruitful, which is why philosophers engage in it.

So psychologists, for example, expose correlations, and sometimes those correlations can be quite eye-opening and striking and they merit consideration. If you want a couple of examples, one of the striking correlations is between positive affect, or happiness in that sense, and pro-social giving, when you spend more of your money on other people than on yourself, which goes against, of course, you know, what people tend to believe. And also more recently, the correlation established by some psychologists between the attraction towards authoritarianism and a sense of meaningfulness in life. So those, when they are well documented — these correlations cannot be dismissed, and they cry out for exploration.

“ [P]sychologists, for example, expose correlations, and sometimes those correlations can be quite eye-opening and striking and they merit consideration. [... O]ne of the striking correlations is between positive affect, or happiness in that sense, and pro-social giving, when you spend more of your money on other people than on yourself, which goes against, of course, you know, what people tend to believe. ”

Amanda Anderson: Bernard, let me follow that up by asking you, why do you think positive psychology and happiness research emerged when it did and has enjoyed such success? Do you have any thoughts about that from a cultural, or historical, or disciplinary perspective?

Bernard Reginster:  Well, the emergence of that trend in the field of social psychology is something that I will let Joachim address, but I can say a few words about why it’s been so influential and successful. Certainly one reason for this is the fact that, at least in the 20th century and at least in the English-speaking world, the study of happiness was in some disrepute in my own discipline. So it was not really examined very much, and as a result there was a vacuum. And I think that the studies of happiness by social psychologists basically took over in this way. Increasingly then the psychological study of happiness has replaced philosophy, but also non-scientific [sic] self-help, as the go-to place where people who seek practical guidance will go in their quest for happiness.

Amanda Anderson:  Joachim, how would you account for the rise of the field?

Joachim Krueger:  Well, the term “positive psychology” was coined deliberately about 20 years ago by the president of the American Psychological Association at the time [Martin Seligman]. That was 1999, and that was kind of a heyday. Culturally and economically, the United States was the only superpower, everybody was happy already, but we can be even happier, and how do we go about it?

And the claim was that the discipline of psychology had ignored happiness, not necessarily about being negative psychology, clinical, but just having this blind spot on: “Can we be happier? And if we can, doesn’t psychology have an obligation to help us find out how?” But we live in quite a different world now [from] 20 years ago. Climate change is now climate crisis, the infrastructure is crumbling in this country, the democratic institution is under duress, and I can tell that our young students can feel that. That’s a different crowd of students than we had 20 years ago.

And I’m not ready to conclude that happiness can be studied only under the best of times — but also under the worst of times, or when times are more challenging, and that’s where we are now. And now, perhaps even more so we have an obligation to do our best to find our way forward.

You might think there is a tendency or risk that the study of happiness becomes overly individualized: Here is this person, and this person wants to be happy, and that’s the end of that. But the happiness of people, individual people, is embedded in a social context. And that’s another one of the major lessons we have for our students, that we are social creatures, and we are not islands or unto ourselves, but our happiness is something that we see and try to optimize within a social context in which we live.

“ You might think there is a tendency or risk that the study of happiness becomes overly individualized: Here is this person, and this person wants to be happy, and that’s the end of that. But the happiness of people, individual people, is embedded in a social context. And that’s another one of the major lessons we have for our students, that we are social creatures, and we are not islands or unto ourselves, but our happiness is something that we see and try to optimize within a social context in which we live. ”

Amanda Anderson:  This connects to my very next question which is to ask the two of you to both talk a little bit about what role larger economic and social factors play in individual happiness. For instance, there are reports about how income inequality or social media negatively affect happiness, but happiness research, as you’re just saying, Joachim, often stresses more immediate factors such as close relations with others or the cultivation of certain practices of affirmation or compassion. So how do larger structural conditions affect happiness or interact with these individual or small-scale practices? Joachim?

Joachim Krueger:  That’s a very delicate thing because we can, of course, study the larger context, and we do, so there’s another interdisciplinary frontier with sociology, political science, and economics. So we try to think and understand things globally, but we have to act locally because that’s all we can do. So we tell our students about the research that we see on the correlations between wealth and income inequality, and inequality and life satisfaction.

The data are pretty clear now: If you have extreme inequality in wealth and income, it leaves a footprint on average happiness. What is probably the most provocative findings within this literature is that these extreme discrepancies are not even good for those who have the most money, and that will probably be the hardest to see for them, that it’s not actually in their higher-order interest to maximize even more, to soak up even more, of a nation’s or global wealth within a few hands.

But hey, what can we do about that? Not that much. So that might require another course or another type of scholarship to go there, but what we can do is put that on the radar screen for ourselves and for our students.

Amanda Anderson:  Bernard, would you like to add anything?

Bernard Reginster:  Well, I might say that that’s true: We can’t do much about macro-economical conditions. But we did have a segment on happiness and social media, the use of social media, especially in young people, which was truly frightening. There’s a correlation between the number of times you spent on social media and suicidal tendencies. So that was problematic. But I would say that, you know, even though we cannot intervene necessarily, we can clarify what the issues are.

And another interesting example, I think, is the fact that some countries — I mean, it started in the country of Bhutan, but now the British government does it and other countries as well — started to sort of switch to a way of assessing the success and therefore the viability of a particular type of social organization, not in economic measures such as the gross domestic product for example, but in terms of something that is being called global national happiness.

I have to mention, again, something that I just found out recently about this, is that when it comes to the viability of the type of social organization under which we operate, some interesting research that just came out [is] showing that there’s actually a strong negative correlation between happiness, or positive affect, and the inclination towards authoritarianism.

So the people who are inclined towards authoritarianism tend to be very unhappy, but at the same time, there is also some research that shows that the inclination towards authoritarianism is not strongly correlated with low economic standing. So, of course, that might suggest that then we have political reason to care for the global national happiness as much as for the GDP since the very survival of our democratic political system seems to depend upon it.

But it turns out that things are even more complicated than this, because the same research that I mentioned a moment ago also shows a positive correlation between the inclination towards authoritarianism and meaningfulness. And that might suggest that the deep political problem is not that we don’t care enough about happiness. The deep political problem might be that we don’t care enough about meaningfulness, and that the survival of our republic depends upon that. So these are the kinds of concern, we can’t do anything about them, but at least we can expose them, bring them to the right.

“ [T]he deep political problem is not that we don’t care enough about happiness. The deep political problem might be that we don’t care enough about meaningfulness, and that the survival of our republic depends upon that. ”

Amanda Anderson: That’s fascinating. You’ve both talked about how your two approaches complement one another and are both necessary for the study of happiness. But let me also ask you, were there substantive disagreements between the two of you in your approach to the topic of happiness, and have there been cases in which those disagreements were productive for the course or for the collaboration? Bernard?

Bernard Reginster:  One disagreement that we have had for some time now is about hedonism, which is the view that happiness consists of a preponderance of pleasure over pain. Joachim has been inclined towards it. I have been more skeptical. But the interesting thing is that once you start looking closely, you realize that the disagreement might be more apparent than real. So two examples: One is that when Joachim talks about happiness, of course what he has in mind is happiness in the fairly restricted psychological sense, and it may well be that happiness in that sense consists of pleasure. But when I talk about happiness, I talk about a broader concept of wellbeing, and there, there are reasons to think that maybe while pleasure may be part of it, it’s not the whole of it.

But another issue is that sometimes it looks as though a disagreement over hedonism is a disagreement about the importance of pleasure in happiness, and in fact, we don’t disagree about that. I mean, it would be insane of me to disagree that pleasure is an important, common, maybe even necessary part of happiness. The question really is, you know, what this means — the fact that pleasure and happiness are strongly correlated, what it means about our understanding of happiness. And there, there might be room for disagreement, right? I mean, so I tend to believe that happiness doesn’t consist of pleasure, but that pleasure is an indication of a state, which is a state of happiness, or that being happy tends to produce more pleasure than being unhappy, for example, and maybe Joachim disagrees with that.

Joachim Krueger:  Yeah [chuckles]. It’s an unfolding story. We’ve taught the course now four times, and when I listened to my colleague, Bernard, I noticed all the critiques on hedonism, and so I found myself resisting that: “Come on, we can’t throw the baby out of the bath water. There’s something to be said for pleasure. Would you really? I mean, more pleasure is good, right? More pleasure, less pain, yes, sign me up.” And the question is rather, is that all that people want?

And so I find myself — yes, pleasure, and more pleasure, less pain, that fits my definition of happiness. But of course, when we ask, “What do people want and need?” this conception of happiness doesn’t exhaust it. And I’m reminded of my favorite book review that I ever read. It was published in 1940, it was one paragraph, and it was George Orwell’s review of an English translation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf . And Orwell didn’t really go into critiquing the book, which could have gone on for pages.

He made one point, and the point was that Hitler understood that the Enlightenment idea of happiness is not the only thing that drives people. That as a dictator, as a tyrant, as a populist, you can actually exploit other needs that people have and their willingness to actually accept pain or suffering. And that is a very deep lesson, and that’s an ongoing question in our course: happiness — yes, pleasure, less pain, but what else is going on? And so some of our disagreements about how we frame [the course] was the domain that we look at. Do we include meaning, let’s say, into our definition of subjective wellbeing or not? And that’s arguable.

Amanda Anderson:  Joachim, are there things that you feel that you learned from the students, particularly through the group projects or the collaborative dimensions of the course?

Joachim Krueger:  Yes, I did, at two levels. So the last time we taught the course, we introduced group work. We had over 200 students and we had over 30 groups of eight, and they were told to generate a hypothesis and a tractable empirical problem, and collect data, analyze them, and write a report. And they did, and I was just amazed how well that went. There was not a single group out of the 32 groups that imploded or collapsed.

And what I learned was a) the students can do it and most of them like it, and [b)] their reports were very good, addressing a lot of problems of our current time — there were many projects addressed to COVID-related issues and social media related issues. I learned, we learned, that the students got into it and they were not defensive or resistant, and that they embraced this opportunity to study, to themselves do some study and grow with that, and that was delightful.

Amanda Anderson:  I mean, it’s interesting. You did teach the course during what many people would describe as a distinctly unhappy time, which is to say during the second spring of COVID-19, and that’s striking that it informed some of the group projects. And I know you talked earlier in the interview about how the cultural context for happiness studies is very different from the moment historically in which it emerged. I’m just wondering, Bernard, do you have thoughts on teaching the course and thinking about the topic of happiness during the pandemic? Do you feel that that affected the course in significant ways?

Bernard Reginster:  I only have a few anecdotes from some individual students I’ve spoken with, so I don’t have any sort of a general sense of how the students fared. Part of the issue for us, I think, is that because we were teaching the course as the pandemic was happening, we didn’t have the distance that’s necessary to be able to assess the impact of such a massive event on the happiness of people.

I mean, we know now that obviously it wasn’t good in many respects, but we don’t know yet, for example, whether the changes that it will bring, for example, in the way in which people conceive of the place of work in their lives, will in fact be beneficial. They could well be, or maybe simply the fact that people recognize that getting along, you know, having social interaction with people, is actually quite important to your happiness and that the self-imposed isolation of COVID made that very clear to them. So there could still be beneficial effects, but we have to wait and see.

Amanda Anderson:  Those are very interesting reflections. It is fascinating to think about how important it’s going to be to allow some time to pass before we can really assess the last couple of years. So as a last question, I’d like to ask you: This has been such a fruitful collaboration for the two of you, I can tell. I mean, even when you talk about disagreement within the conversation itself, during this interview, there was a dynamism and a kind of a rethinking in relation to the other person’s position. Is there another topic that you think might profit from collaboration between a psychologist and a philosopher? Joachim?

Joachim Krueger:  Yeah, I’d love to answer that, but I can’t resist going back to the previous question really quickly. And that is, times change, cultures change, and our challenges change, but also some things are timeless. And students have never asked me point blank, "Professor, what’s the secret to happiness?" — I’m still waiting for somebody to ask me that because I have an answer, and I told them anyway, and I’m going to tell you now.

There is no “the secret,” but there are a number of little secrets. And one is — if I have one sentence to give one piece of advice is — it’s this: Go take a walk in the woods with a friend. Because you get three for one: The walk is good because the body likes to move. You get physiological benefits. We do know that people feel better when exposed and within nature as opposed to a human-made environment. And somebody you love, or like. That’s pro-sociality.

“ Go take a walk in the woods with a friend. Because you get three for one: The walk is good because the body likes to move. You get physiological benefits. We do know that people feel better when exposed and within nature as opposed to a human-made environment. And somebody you love, or like. That’s pro-sociality. ”

Joachim Krueger:  As to other topics, there are many. Now Bernard and I are both interested in social life, the social world and how people navigate it, and one particularly intriguing concept on which we both have our perspectives is social status — which is something most people want, it’s very difficult to get, it’s easy to lose, and it has a dialectical challenge because, as you gain status, you go above others in your group, so you have a reduction of that kind of affinity or closeness when everybody’s equal. Yet most of us want to be better in some ways. So, that’s a balance we have to find, and I think that’s a topic where we can both take a look using psychological and philosophical concepts and methods.

Amanda Anderson:  Bernard, do you have thoughts about that question?

Bernard Reginster:  I would love to collaborate on the issue of social status. My interest in social status is that I understand status as the fact of enjoying a certain kind of social respect or esteem. You know, you want to be valued by your group or by significant others in your group. And I find it fascinating to understand why. And the standard view in social psychology, which I’ve learned from Joachim, is that the esteem of others is valued as a condition of your own self-esteem, but I just don’t think that’s ... I mean, that may be true in some cases, it’s certainly not true in all cases.

I mean, in many cases you want the esteem of others because you firmly believe, and you have no doubt about that, that you deserve it. And the question is, why is it so important to us? What is it that we want when we want the esteem of others if it’s not simply to bolster or validate one’s self-esteem? So that’s a fascinating question to me, and I know that Joachim has written a lot about this, so I would likely learn very much from him on this particular topic.

Another topic of collaboration on which I have a longstanding interest would be the importance of meaningfulness in a good life. What is it? Psychologists have started to talk about this. They have started to realize that the psychological markers for meaningfulness are different from the psychological markers for happiness, so there’s a budding science of meaningfulness in psychology, but philosophers, of course, have long been interested in that, and so that would be interesting as well.

Amanda Anderson:  Could you just say a little bit more about what the different markers are for meaningfulness versus happiness?

Bernard Reginster:  Well, for instance, I mean, the research I mentioned earlier shows that the marker for meaningfulness is a preponderance of negative affect over positive affect, and the marker for happiness is exactly the opposite. So it shows that meaningfulness and happiness can really diverge. They don’t need to. The argument can be made that if you are happy, your chances of having a life that’s also meaningful are greater. But they can also diverge. I mean, it makes sense for people to say that they are willing to sacrifice their happiness for a meaningful cause.

But the interesting fact is that both happiness and meaningfulness are part of what makes a life good for you. Your having a meaningful life doesn’t make the world better, doesn’t benefit the world. It benefits you. Likewise, your being happy doesn’t necessarily benefit the world. It benefits you primarily. And so you have this strange sort of a shape of the territory of wellbeing that you have these different components of it that can pull in different directions. So part of my motivation for studying meaningfulness in collaboration with Joachim would be to explore that peculiar fact.

Amanda Anderson:  That’s fascinating. I want to thank both of you so much for taking the time to talk today. This has been a wonderful conversation. Thanks so much for being on the show.

Bernard Reginster:  Thank you, Amanda. Thank you very much.

Joachim Krueger:  Thank you, Amanda. It was a pleasure and no pain. Thank you.

Amanda Anderson:  Meeting Street explores some of the most important and creative work being done in the humanities today through conversations with scholars and thinkers who are extending the boundaries of their respective fields. The show is produced by the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University. Damien Mahiet is our production manager. Our sound editor is Jake Sokolov-Gonzalez. If you enjoyed this week’s episode of Meeting Street, please leave a review wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.

A Short History of Happiness From Eudaimonia to Gross National Happiness

By Kunal Kashyap

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Isn’t happiness unanimously desired by every human being on Earth? Humans have strived for happiness from the very beginning. However, ‘happiness’ is one of the most variable emotions known to mankind as its meaning and the way of achieving it varies from person to person. Still, in every era philosophers have attempted to define happiness and ways to attain it. The philosophical understanding of ‘happiness’ changed through the passage of time. In the ancient world, Aristotle held virtues as the way of attaining happiness. With the commencement of the Middle Ages, philosophers like Al Ghazali and Thomas Aquinas identified the love of God as the only path to achieve happiness. In the late 18th century, Jeremy Bentham introduced the hedonistic approach to happiness. Furthermore, in the contemporary world, as happiness is also being promoted as a political objective, it has gained a new dimension.

Happiness through virtues

In the ancient period, Aristotle defined happiness as the chief human good in his book ‘Nicomachean Ethics’. His understanding of happiness is different from the regular connotation of the word ‘happiness’. He introduced the concept of happiness known as ‘Eudaimonia’. Eudaimonia is not concerned with the momentary happiness caused by a particular event. Instead, it implies that the person is admirable and lives life to its best. Aristotle held virtues like courage, temperance, justice, etc. to be the fundamental guides for a well-lived life. He held that a happy man is “one who exercises his faculties in accordance with perfect excellence, being duly furnished with external goods, not for any chance of time, but for a full term of years … and who shall continue to live so, and shall die as he lived.” 1

Moreover, Aristotle described that every ethical virtue is the intermediate state between the two extremes of that virtue. The two extremes consist of excess and deficiency of a particular virtue. For instance, the virtue of ‘courage’ is the mean between two extremes, one being ‘cowardice’ and the other being ‘foolhardiness’.

Aristotle’s theory of happiness rests on three concepts: (1) the virtues; (2) phronesis or practical wisdom; and (3) eudaimonia or flourishing.

Like Aristotle, Plato also maintained a virtue based eudaemonistic approach towards happiness. In The Republic , Plato poses two questions: “what is justice?” and “what is the relation between justice and happiness?” In the dialogue, Socrates considers justice as one of the four cardinal virtues. Plato also argued that justice is virtue and wisdom, and injustice is vice and ignorance. To answer the second question, Socrates argued that the just is better off than the unjust. The Republic establishes the relation between justice and happiness as follows:

“But furthermore, he who lives well is blessed and happy, and he who does not the contrary.” – “Of course. Then the just is happy and the unjust miserable.” 2

So Plato in The Republic advocates that a just person is likely to be happier than an unjust person.

Image: Dreamstudio.ai

From virtues to religion

There was a huge shift in the philosophical understanding of happiness from the ancient era to the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, the love of God became the chief idea of happiness. Purification of the soul and knowledge of one’s self and God are some common aspects which can be seen in the descriptions of happiness.

The monotheism of Christianity was considered offensive against the polytheism of the Roman Empire. In the Roman Empire, Christians repeatedly faced persecution. However, the majority of Christians managed to avoid punishment and the empire failed to check the rise of Christianity. By 324, Emperor Constantine, a Christian convert, rose to power and Christianity became the state religion. The Roman people considered their Emperor as God. Christianity, however, believed in one God, who was not the emperor. This led to a weakening of the emperor’s authority and credibility. Eventually, when the Byzantine Empire emerged from the ruins of the Roman Empire, orthodox Christianity became the dominant religion. The popularity of Christianity may have contributed to the religious shift in how happiness was viewed at the time. Moreover, Christianity is predominantly based on scripture. It is noteworthy that one can easily draw parallels between Saint Augustine’s and Thomas Aquinas’ concepts of happiness and verses in the Bible.

Though St. Augustine was born in 354 AD, his work continued to be of significance in the Middle Ages as well. He held that happiness is the ultimate goal of human life and considered God as the true source of happiness as compared to the other lesser sources. He held that we are doomed to be miserable and wicked if we divert our attention from the love of God to the love of bodies. He believed that happiness is already within us and faith in God helps us to unveil it. Augustine precisely stated in De beata vita “Happy is he who has God”. A similar line of thought can be found in the Bible, John 14:20, as it states: “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you”. The verse implies that the believers will eventually realise the immanence of the Son in the Father, which will further lead to the appreciation of their own union with God.

In this mini-series of posts, we trace the history of the concept of love from Plato and Aristotle through the Christian world to the Desert Fathers.

Another philosopher of the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas, denied the possibility of perfect happiness on this Earth. However, he held that imperfect happiness is possible, which he called Felicitas . According to him, when a purified soul attains true knowledge of God, that soul will experience a pure and eternal bliss that will satisfy every human desire and demolish every sadness and worry. In his book, Summa Theologiae, he proposed that the mystical (beatific) vision of God is true happiness, which can only be achieved in the afterlife. One could find a parallel to this in the Bible, where it is written (“Sermon on the Mount”):

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The above phrases are known as ‘beatitudes’, which comes from a Latin word beatus , which means blessed or happy. They seek to assure the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers that they will be granted mercy and the view of God in the kingdom of heaven. Furthermore, in heaven, the mournful will be comforted, the hungry will be fed and they will be called sons of God.

The Middle Ages were not only marked by the rise of Christianity. The era also saw the development of Islamic mysticism, popularly known as Sufism. Al Ghazali, a prominent Islamic philosopher of the Middle Ages, was a follower of and contributor to the Sufi tradition. He wrote extensively on the topic of happiness. Sufi mystics held that the way to illumination culminates in maʿrifah (“interior knowledge”) and in maḥabbah (“love”). It implied the union of lover and beloved. Self or interior knowledge and love are the central themes in the philosophy of Al Ghazali.

Al Ghazali, in his book The Alchemy of Happiness, considered knowledge of the self the key to the knowledge of God; and the knowledge of God the key to happiness. According to Al Ghazali, knowledge of the self consists in the answers to the following questions: “What art thou in thyself, and from whence hast thou come? Whither art thou going, and for what purpose hast thou come to tarry here awhile, and in what does thy real happiness and misery consist?” 3 He considered love as the seed of happiness; therefore, ‘love of God’ is necessary for attaining happiness. He advocated that love of God is fostered by constant worship and remembrance of God.

Source: Dreamstudio.ai

From religion to hedonism

There was a shift in the idea of happiness from a religious orientation in the Middle Ages to hedonism in the eighteenth century. The term hedonism comes from the Greek word hēdonē, which means pleasure. Hedonism advocates that pleasure and pain are the two most important elements of human life and human behaviour must be guided in such a way that it increases pleasure and decreases pain.

The 18th century saw the industrial revolution in Europe, which was marked by the rise of materialism, hints of which can be found in the concept of hedonism. Jeremy Bentham was the pioneer of hedonism in which wealth was one of the elements of measuring happiness. Bentham held that “Of two individuals with unequal fortunes, he who has the most wealth has the most happiness”. 4 However, he was conscious of the limitations of this approach. He thought that the successive addition to the wealth of a rich person will not result in the addition of pleasure of the same amount every time. The addition of pleasure or happiness will decrease with every successive addition, so that a poor person will profit more than a rich one from being given a particular sum of money.

Bentham introduced the ‘hedonic calculus’ to measure the amount of pleasure a specific action is likely to produce. The calculus was based on intensity, duration, certainty or uncertainty, propinquity or remoteness, fecundity, purity, and the extent (reach) of an action.

Bentham was also a political reformer. Therefore, his idea of happiness was also modelled on good governance, laws and social utility. Bentham proposed that the government should apply the hedonic calculus in its decision making, and thus achieve the good (happiness or pleasure) for many and pain for few. In his later writings, he related the idea of happiness to personal security, enhanced health facilities, lower crime rates, education, and keeping check on diseases caused by sewage pollution.

The 18th century also witnessed the French revolution in 1789. The aim of the revolution was to overthrow monarchy in order to establish a republican regime and to achieve the equality of all citizens. Bentham agreed with these goals of the French Revolution, and the notion of equality is immanent in the idea of happiness proposed by Bentham. He held that “when one maximizes the good, it is the good impartially considered. My good counts for no more than anyone else’s good. Further, the reason I have to promote the overall good is the same reason anyone else has to so promote the good. It is not peculiar to me.” 5

Another adherent of hedonism, John Stuart Mill held that “By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.” 6 He went along with most of Bentham’s ideas on happiness. However, he introduced a qualitative distinction of different types of pleasures, which was lacking in Bentham’s hedonism. He thought that intellectual pleasures such as ‘learning’ occupy a higher position than sensual pleasures such as eating and drinking. He believed that it was better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. Mill also assumed that everyone’s happiness counted the same, as he argued that the principle of utility “is a mere form of words without rational signification, unless one person’s happiness, supposed equal in degree …, is counted for exactly as much as another’s.” 7

Live Happier with Aristotle: Inspiration and Workbook (Daily Philosophy Guides to Happiness). In this book, philosophy professor, founder and editor of the Daily Philosophy web magazine, Dr Andreas Matthias takes us all the way back to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle in the search for wisdom and guidance on how we can live better, happier and more satisfying lives today. Get it now on Amazon! Click here!

Back to virtues

With the advent of the 20th century, criticisms of hedonism emerged and Aristotelian philosophy became popular again. Moreover, happiness was now being promoted as a political goal.

Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe has been credited with the revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics in the modern era. Her essay Modern Moral Philosophy, which was published in 1958, revitalized the interest in virtue ethics in Western academic philosophy, and Aristotelian philosophy got popularised in the following years. She criticized the hedonistic approach to happiness by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill as a hopelessly simplistic notion of happiness.

The perhaps most prominent critic of hedonism of the 20th century was Robert Nozick. He put forward the ‘Experience Machine’ thought experiment in his book Anarchy, State and Utopia in 1974. In the experiment, Nozick gives us the option of plugging up into a machine for life, which will flawlessly create a string of utmost happy experiences. Most importantly, once plugged in, one will not be conscious of being plugged into the machine. For the person inside the machines, all the experiences they make will feel real. Most people rejected being plugged into the machine as they agreed with Nozick that living in reality is far more important than living an unreal pleasurable life.

Another concept of happiness, based on whole life satisfaction, was proposed by Władysław Tatarkiewicz. In his book Analysis of Happiness, he held that in antiquity philosophers associated happiness with the possession of some particular highest good, whether wealth, qualities or virtues. He advocated that for a person to be happy, they must be satisfied with their lives as a whole. He noted that every kind of happiness leads to satisfaction but that not every kind of satisfaction leads to happiness. Partial satisfaction cannot bring happiness. Only full satisfaction with one’s life will cause one to be happy. Moreover, Tatarkiewicz stressed that one must be satisfied with both the past and the future expectations of one’s life, in addition to the way one’s life is in the present.

Happiness as a political goal

Towards the end of the twentieth century, happiness began to be promoted as a political goal. Several indices were introduced for measuring the happiness of the citizens of a country. One such index is the Gross National Happiness Index. The term ‘Gross National Happiness’ was coined in 1976 by the then King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck. He held that the Gross National Happiness of a country is more important than its Gross Domestic Product. The GNH is an approach towards development which balances both materialistic and non-materialistic values with the belief that the ultimate end of humans is happiness. It is one the most popular attempts to objectify the notion of happiness. The GNH consists of nine domains to assess happiness: psychological well-being, time use, health, education, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience and living standards.

In 2011, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution titled Happiness: Towards a Holistic Definition of Development and appealed to its member states to measure the happiness of their people and to use the data to improve public policies.

Even if the government of a nation does not consider promoting happiness as a moral obligation, it does have an interest in gaining popular support and maximizing the happiness of the people in the country. Furthermore, a government’s control over institutional and social factors, which play a significant role in ensuring the happiness of people, has made the government’s role indispensable in promoting happiness.

The philosophical understanding of happiness has been subjected to change through the passage of time. Events from within as well as from outside the philosophical world have affected the definition of happiness in every era. There cannot be a universal definition of happiness. A virtuous person would be happy if they are living their life in accordance with their morals; an acquisitive person would be happy if they are making a fortune; and a monk or nun would be happy if they are entirely immersed in the devotion of God. The way of attaining happiness might differ between persons to the extent that the happiness of one can be misery for the other. An extrovert would be happy in a group of people while, on the other hand, being amongst many people would be a misery for an introvert. Therefore, everyone’s happiness cannot be put in the same mould. It is still true and widely held, however, that happiness is the ultimate end of every human action and that it is unanimously sought by everyone.

Kunal Kashyap on Daily Philosophy:

• A Short History of Happiness. From Eudaimonia to Gross National Happiness

Cover image: Dreamstudio.ai with prompt “Ancient Greek temple in Picasso style cubist colorful.” – Church window prompt: “church window stained glass with light shining through it showing a scene from the Bible colorful on a dark background.” – Picasso people prompt: “two happy friends hugging each other picasso colourful style.” Learn more about AI art in our article “Stunning AI-Generated Art.”

F. H PETERS,  The Nicomachean Ethics Of Aristotle , 10th ed. (repr., London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1906), 27.  ↩︎

Plato. United Kingdom: W. Heinemann, 1982.  ↩︎

Al Ghazālī and Claud Field,  The Alchemy Of Happiness  (repr., New York: Cosimo Classics, 2005), 1.  ↩︎

Jeremy Bentham, Etienne Dumont and Richard Hildreth,  Theory Of Legislation  (repr., London: Trübner, 1864), 103-105.  ↩︎

Julia Driver, “The History Of Utilitarianism”, Plato.Stanford.Edu, 2014, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/utilitarianism-history/ .  ↩︎

John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, 4th ed. (repr., London: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer, 1871), 10.  ↩︎

John Stuart Mill et al.,  Essays On Ethics, Religion And Society Essay On Mill’s Utilitarianism  (repr., Toronto University of Toronto Press London Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), 257.  ↩︎

Happiness According to Aristotle

Simple definitions of happiness according to aristotle.

What does it mean to be truly happy? Aristotle , a great thinker from ancient Greece, offers us an excellent recipe for real happiness. He introduces us to ‘ eudaimonia ,’ which isn’t the typical happy feeling you get from eating your favorite ice cream or watching a funny movie. Instead, eudaimonia is something deeper. It’s like playing a challenging video game, where every level you beat makes you a better player, and the real prize is becoming the hero of your own adventure.

Think of eudaimonia as the ultimate goal in life – flourishing like a sturdy tree boasting a full spread of leaves. For Aristotle, being your best self involves growing your virtues – qualities like being honest, fair, and disciplined – and using your brainpower to make life awesome. When you act with good intentions and work on improving yourself, it’s as if you’re a tree spreading your branches toward the sun, reaching your full potential and basking in the glow of true happiness.

How to Guide

Searching for this deeper happiness seems like an exciting quest, right? Aristotle left us a guidebook to finding eudaimonia:

• Practice virtues like courage, justice, and temperance. You become courageous by facing fears, fair by treating people equally, and moderate by not indulging in too much of anything.
• Engage in challenging activities that stretch what you can do. Keep improving and take pride in personal achievements.
• Build strong friendships and help your community. Do your part to make the world a kinder place.
• Always keep learning and exploring. Use your curiosity to understand the world better.
• Look for a balance in life. Don’t go over the top with anything; keep it “just right” to stay healthy and happy.

Aristotle believed that by following these guidelines, you would not just have fun, but also create a meaningful life filled with eudaimonia.

Types of Happiness According to Aristotle

Even though Aristotle saw eudaimonia as the ultimate form of happiness, he recognized that people find happiness in different ways:

• The Life of Pleasure: Enjoying things that feel good, like tasty meals and comfortable places to rest.
• The Life of Honor: Wanting to be recognized and remembered, to feel valued and respected by others.
• The Life of Mind: Loving to learn, think deeply, and ponder over life’s big questions.

Out of these, Aristotle cherished the Life of Mind, believing that true happiness comes from within and through the use of reason and intellect.

Examples of Happiness According to Aristotle

• Someone who shares with people in need, not for a thank you, but out of goodness. This shows a noble character, and it spreads joy to others, which is a key part of Aristotle’s happiness.
• An athlete who practices tirelessly, finding satisfaction in mastering their skills, not just in victory. They cherish personal growth, embodying Aristotle’s concept of flourishing through discipline and effort.
• A teacher who dedicates their life to educating others, feeling rewarded by the progress of their students. Their joy comes from the impact they have on others, aligning with Aristotle’s vision of contributing to the greater good.

Why is Happiness According to Aristotle Important?

Aim for eudaimonia, and you’re really aiming for the highest level of human flourishing, according to Aristotle. It’s not just about feeling happy; it’s about creating a cycle of goodness that radiates from you to others. Living virtuously elevates not just ourselves but the people and world around us. How we choose to live our lives impacts everything – that is why Aristotle’s happiness matters.

By striving to be the best we can be, we set off a chain reaction of positivity. This ancient concept is as alive today as it was back then because it gets us to consider our potential impact on society. For the average person, this approach to happiness can lead to a fulfilling and meaningful life, influencing our day-to-day choices and interactions. It’s a guiding light in a world where happiness is often mistaken for fleeting pleasures.

Origin of Aristotle’s Thoughts on Happiness

Aristotle, who lived around 2,300 years ago, shared his wisdom on happiness in his work, the “Nicomachean Ethics.” He stepped out from the shadow of his teacher, Plato , to focus on the practical ways we can live well. He cared about real-life experiences and how we can nurture the best qualities within ourselves.

Controversies Around Happiness According to Aristotle

While Aristotle’s teachings on happiness are influential, they’re not without debate . Some argue that ‘happiness’ as a word doesn’t fully capture the depth of eudaimonia. Also, critics claim that achieving Aristotle’s ideal could be really tough for people facing hardships. Plus, is eudaimonia possible for everyone, or is it an exclusive state that only a few can attain? These questions spark discussions on how to adapt Aristotle’s insights to our modern lives.

Other Important Points

Aristotle’s take on happiness isn’t a short-lived joyride; it’s a long-term journey towards a life well-lived, marked by actions that enrich our character. Also, according to Aristotle, true happiness means recognizing the value of community – human connection is vital in our quest for eudaimonia.

Lastly, he preached balance in all things: too much courage could make you reckless, too little might make you a coward. Finding the middle ground, or the Golden Mean, is key to his vision of happiness.

Related Topics with Explanations

• Virtue Ethics: A philosophy focused on moral character over following set rules or aiming for rewards. It’s about doing the right thing because it’s part of who you are – the real-life equivalent of a storybook hero’s quest for goodness.
• The Golden Mean: Aristotle’s idea for striking perfect balance – not too much, not too little, but just enough. It’s the art of moderation, like enjoying a slice of pie without overindulging and feeling sick.
• Platonic Idealism : Plato’s theory that there exists a world of perfect forms, which we can’t see or touch. He believed we should strive to emulate these ideals in our own imperfect world, similar to how a star may inspire us to shine bright.

Aristotle gave us a timeless blueprint for happiness that goes beyond momentary thrills, guiding us towards a profound and lasting sense of fulfillment. By nurturing our virtues and balancing our actions, we cultivate a life of eudaimonia, or true flourishing. Whether through kind deeds, determined effort, or the pursuit of knowledge , we’re on a quest to grow into the very best versions of ourselves.

The quest for eudaimonia is about making every aspect of our lives – from personal pursuits to community involvement – contribute to a rich, flourishing existence. Aristotle’s wisdom holds that by committing to this journey, we unlock a deeper, more enduring happiness. So take up Aristotle’s challenge: grow like the mightiest of trees, strike the perfect balance, and let your life’s path lead you to eudaimonia. This pursuit of happiness is a continuum from the past and a beacon for our future, inviting each of us to be a champion in the game of life.

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What Is Happiness?

Defining Happiness, and How to Become Happier

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Rachel Goldman, PhD FTOS, is a licensed psychologist, clinical assistant professor, speaker, wellness expert specializing in eating behaviors, stress management, and health behavior change.

Verywell/ Jiaqi Zhou

How to Cultivate Happiness

How to be a happier person.

Happiness is something that people seek to find, yet what defines happiness can vary from one person to the next. Typically, happiness is an emotional state characterized by feelings of joy, satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment. While happiness has many different definitions, it is often described as involving positive emotions and life satisfaction. 

When most people talk about the true meaning of happiness, they might be talking about how they feel in the present moment or referring to a more general sense of how they feel about life overall.

Because happiness tends to be such a broadly defined term, psychologists and other social scientists typically use the term ' subjective well-being ' when they talk about this emotional state. Just as it sounds, subjective well-being tends to focus on an individual's overall personal feelings about their life in the present.  

Two key components of happiness (or subjective well-being) are:

• The balance of emotions: Everyone experiences both positive and negative emotions, feelings, and moods. Happiness is generally linked to experiencing more positive feelings than negative ones.
• Life satisfaction: This relates to how satisfied you feel with different areas of your life including your relationships, work, achievements, and other things that you consider important.

Another definition of happiness comes from the ancient philosopher Aristotle, who suggested that happiness is the one human desire, and all other human desires exist as a way to obtain happiness. He believed that there were four levels of happiness: happiness from immediate gratification, from comparison and achievement, from making positive contributions, and from achieving fulfillment. 

Happiness, Aristotle suggested, could be achieved through the golden mean, which involves finding a balance between deficiency and excess.

Signs of Happiness

While perceptions of happiness may be different from one person to the next, there are some key signs that psychologists look for when measuring and assessing happiness.

Some key signs of happiness include:

• Feeling like you are living the life you wanted
• Going with the flow and a willingness to take life as it comes
• Feeling that the conditions of your life are good
• Enjoying positive, healthy relationships with other people
• Feeling that you have accomplished (or will accomplish) what you want in life
• Feeling satisfied with your life
• Feeling positive more than negative
• Being open to new ideas and experiences
• Practicing self-care and treating yourself with kindness and compassion
• Experiencing gratitude
• Feeling that you are living life with a sense of meaning and purpose
• Wanting to share your happiness and joy with others

One important thing to remember is that happiness isn't a state of constant euphoria . Instead, happiness is an overall sense of experiencing more positive emotions than negative ones.

Happy people still feel the whole range of human emotions—anger, frustrastion, boredom, loneliness, and even sadness—from time to time. But even when faced with discomfort, they have an underlying sense of optimism that things will get better, that they can deal with what is happening, and that they will be able to feel happy again.

Types of Happiness

There are many different ways of thinking about happiness. For example, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle made a distinction between two different kinds of happiness: hedonia and eudaimonia.

• Hedonia: Hedonic happiness is derived from pleasure. It is most often associated with doing what feels good, self-care, fulfilling desires, experiencing enjoyment, and feeling a sense of satisfaction.
• Eudaimonia: This type of happiness is derived from seeking virtue and meaning. Important components of eudaimonic well-being including feeling that your life has meaning, value, and purpose. It is associated more with fulfilling responsibilities, investing in long-term goals, concern for the welfare of other people, and living up to personal ideals.

Hedonia and eudemonia are more commonly known today in psychology as pleasure and meaning, respectively. More recently, psychologists have suggested the addition of the third component that relates to engagement . These are feelings of commitment and participation in different areas of life.

Research suggests that happy people tend to rank pretty high on eudaimonic life satisfaction and better than average on their hedonic life satisfaction.  

All of these can play an important role in the overall experience of happiness, although the relative value of each can be highly subjective. Some activities may be both pleasurable and meaningful, while others might skew more one way or the other.

For example, volunteering for a cause you believe in might be more meaningful than pleasurable. Watching your favorite tv show, on the other hand, might rank lower in meaning and higher on pleasure.

Some types of happiness that may fall under these three main categories include:

• Joy: A often relatively brief feeling that is felt in the present moment
• Excitement: A happy feeling that involves looking forward to something with positive anticipation
• Gratitude: A positive emotion that involves being thankful and appreciative
• Pride: A feeling of satisfaction in something that you have accomplished
• Optimism: This is a way of looking at life with a positive, upbeat outlook
• Contentment: This type of happiness involves a sense of satisfaction

While some people just tend to be naturally happier, there are things that you can do to cultivate your sense of happiness. 

Pursue Intrinsic Goals 

Achieving goals that you are intrinsically motivated to pursue, particularly ones that are focused on personal growth and community, can help boost happiness. Research suggests that pursuing these types of intrinsically-motivated goals can increase happiness more than pursuing extrinsic goals like gaining money or status.  

Enjoy the Moment

Studies have found that people tend to over earn—they become so focused on accumulating things that they lose track of actually enjoying what they are doing.  

So, rather than falling into the trap of mindlessly accumulating to the detriment of your own happiness, focus on practicing gratitude for the things you have and enjoying the process as you go. 

Reframe Negative Thoughts

When you find yourself stuck in a pessimistic outlook or experiencing negativity, look for ways that you can reframe your thoughts in a more positive way. 

People have a natural negativity bias , or a tendency to pay more attention to bad things than to good things. This can have an impact on everything from how you make decisions to how you form impressions of other people. Discounting the positive—a cognitive distortion where people focus on the negative and ignore the positive—can also contribute to negative thoughts.

Reframing these negative perceptions isn't about ignoring the bad. Instead, it means trying to take a more balanced, realistic look at events. It allows you to notice patterns in your thinking and then challenge negative thoughts.

Impact of Happiness

Why is happiness so important? Happiness has been shown to predict positive outcomes in many different areas of life including mental well-being, physical health, and overall longevity.

• Positive emotions increase satisfaction with life.
• Happiness helps people build stronger coping skills and emotional resources.
• Positive emotions are linked to better health and longevity. One study found that people who experienced more positive emotions than negative ones were more likely to have survived over a 13 year period.
• Positive feelings increase resilience. Resilience helps people better manage stress and bounce back better when faced with setbacks. For example, one study found that happier people tend to have lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol and that these benefits tend to persist over time.
• People who report having a positive state of well-being are more likely to engage in healthy behaviors such as eating fruits and vegetables and engaging in regular physical exercise.
• Being happy may make help you get sick less often. Happier mental states are linked to increased immunity.

Some people seem to have a naturally higher baseline for happiness—one large-scale study of more than 2,000 twins suggested that around 50% of overall life satisfaction was due to genetics, 10% to external events, and 40% to individual activities.

So while you might not be able to control what your “base level” of happiness is, there are things that you can do to make your life happier and more fulfilling. Even the happiest of individuals can feel down from time to time and happiness is something that all people need to consciously pursue.

Cultivate Strong Relationships

Social support is an essential part of well-being. Research has found that good social relationships are the strongest predictor of happiness. Having positive and supportive connections with people you care about can provide a buffer against stress, improve your health, and help you become a happier person.

In the Harvard Study of Adult Development, a longitudinal study that looked at participants over 80 years, researchers found that relationships and how happy people are in those relationships strongly impacted overall health.

So if you are trying to improve your happiness, cultivating solid social connections is a great place to start. Consider deepening your existing relationships and explore ways to make new friends. 

Get Regular Exercise

Exercise is good for both your body and mind. Physical activity is linked to a range of physical and psychological benefits including improved mood. Numerous studies have shown that regular exercise may play a role in warding off symptoms of depression, but evidence also suggests that it may also help make people happier, too.

In one analysis of past research on the connection between physical activity and happiness, researchers found a consistent positive link.  

Even a little bit of exercise produces a happiness boost—people who were physically active for as little as 10 minutes a day or who worked out only once a week had higher levels of happiness than people who never exercised.

Show Gratitude

In one study, participants were asked to engage in a writing exercise for 10 to 20 minutes each night before bed.   Some were instructed to write about daily hassles, some about neutral events, and some about things they were grateful for. The results found that people who had written about gratitude had increase positive emotions, increased subjective happiness, and improve life satisfaction.

As the authors of the study suggest, keeping a gratitude list is a relatively easy, affordable, simple, and pleasant way to boost your mood. Try setting aside a few minutes each night to write down or think about things in your life that you are grateful for.

Find a Sense of Purpose

Research has found that people who feel like they have a purpose have better well-being and feel more fulfilled.   A sense of purpose involves seeing your life as having goals, direction, and meaning. It may help improve happiness by promoting healthier behaviors. 

Some things you can do to help find a sense of purpose include:

• Explore your interests and passions
• Engage in prosocial and altruistic causes
• Work to address injustices
• Look for new things you might want to learn more about

This sense of purpose is influenced by a variety of factors, but it is also something that you can cultivate. It involves finding a goal that you care deeply about that will lead you to engage in productive, positive actions in order to work toward that goal.

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Challenges of Finding Happiness

While seeking happiness is important, there are times when the pursuit of life satisfaction falls short. Some challenges to watch for include:

Valuing the Wrong Things

Money may not be able to buy happiness, but there is research that spending money on things like experiences can make you happier than spending it on material possessions. 

One study, for example, found that spending money on things that buy time—such as spending money on time-saving services—can increase happiness and life satisfaction.  

Rather than overvaluing things such as money, status, or material possessions, pursuing goals that result in more free time or enjoyable experiences may have a higher happiness reward.

Not Seeking Social Support

Social support means having friends and loved ones that you can turn to for support. Research has found that perceived social support plays an important role in subjective well-being. For example, one study found that perceptions of social support were responsible for 43% of a person's level of happiness.  

It is important to remember that when it comes to social support, quality is more important than quantity. Having just a few very close and trusted friends will have a greater impact on your overall happiness than having many casual acquaintances.

Thinking of Happiness as an Endpoint

Happiness isn’t a goal that you can simply reach and be done with. It is a constant pursuit that requires continual nurturing and sustenance.

One study found that people who tend to value happiness most also tended to feel the least satisfied with their lives.   Essentially, happiness becomes such a lofty goal that it becomes virtually unattainable. 

“Valuing happiness could be self-defeating because the more people value happiness, the more likely they will feel disappointed,” suggest the authors of the study.

Perhaps the lesson is to not make something as broadly defined as “happiness” your goal. Instead, focus on building and cultivating the sort of life and relationships that bring fulfillment and satisfaction to your life. 

It is also important to consider how you personally define happiness. Happiness is a broad term that means different things to different people. Rather than looking at happiness as an endpoint, it can be more helpful to think about what happiness really means to you and then work on small things that will help you become happier. This can make achieving these goals more manageable and less overwhelming.

History of Happiness

Happiness has long been recognized as a critical part of health and well-being. The "pursuit of happiness" is even given as an inalienable right in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Our understanding of what will bring happiness, however, has shifted over time.

Psychologists have also proposed a number of different theories to explain how people experience and pursue happiness. These theories include:

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

The hierarchy of needs suggests that people are motivated to pursue increasingly complex needs. Once more basic needs are fulfilled, people are then motivated by more psychological and emotional needs.

At the peak of the hierarchy is the need for self-actualization, or the need to achieve one's full potential. The theory also stresses the importance of peak experiences or transcendent moments in which a person feels deep understanding, happiness, and joy. 

Positive Psychology

The pursuit of happiness is central to the field of positive psychology . Psychologists who study positive psychology are interested in learning ways to increase positivity and helping people live happier, more satisfying lives. 

Rather than focusing on mental pathologies, the field instead strives to find ways to help people, communities, and societies improve positive emotions and achieve greater happiness.

Finley K, Axner M, Vrooman K, Tse D. Ideal levels of prosocial involvement in relation to momentary affect and eudaimonia: Exploring the golden mean . Innov Aging . 2020;4(Suppl 1):614. doi:10.1093/geroni/igaa057.2083

Kringelbach ML, Berridge KC. The neuroscience of happiness and pleasure .  Soc Res (New York) . 2010;77(2):659-678.

Panel on Measuring Subjective Well-Being in a Policy-Relevant Framework; Committee on National Statistics; Division on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; National Research Council; Stone AA, Mackie C, editors. Subjective Well-Being: Measuring Happiness, Suffering, and Other Dimensions of Experience [Internet]. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US).

Lee MA, Kawachi I. The keys to happiness: Associations between personal values regarding core life domains and happiness in South Korea . PLoS One . 2019;14(1):e0209821. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0209821

Hsee CK, Zhang J, Cai CF, Zhang S. Overearning . Psychol Sci . 2013;24(6):852-9

Carstensen LL, Turan B, Scheibe S, et al. Emotional experience improves with age: evidence based on over 10 years of experience sampling . Psychol Aging . 2011;26(1):21‐33. doi:10.1037/a0021285

Steptoe A, Wardle J. Positive affect and biological function in everyday life . Neurobiol Aging . 2005;26 Suppl 1:108‐112. doi:10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2005.08.016

Sapranaviciute-Zabazlajeva L, Luksiene D, Virviciute D, Bobak M, Tamosiunas A. L ink between healthy lifestyle and psychological well-being in Lithuanian adults aged 45-72: a cross-sectional study . BMJ Open . 2017;7(4):e014240. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2016-014240

Costanzo ES, Lutgendorf SK, Kohut ML, et al. Mood and cytokine response to influenza virus in older adults . J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci . 2004;59(12):1328‐1333. doi:10.1093/gerona/59.12.1328

Lyubomirsky S, Sheldon KM, Schkade D. Pursuing happiness: The architecture of sustainable change . Review of General Psychology. 2005;9 (2):111–131. doi:0.1037/1089-2680.9.2.111

The Harvard Gazette. Good genes are nice, but joy is better .

Zhang Z, Chen W. A systematic review of the relationship between physical activity and happiness . J Happiness Stud 20, 1305–1322 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-018-9976-0

Cunha LF, Pellanda LC, Reppold CT. Positive psychology and gratitude interventions: a randomized clinical trial . Front Psychol . 2019;10:584. Published 2019 Mar 21. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00584

Ryff CD. Psychological well-being revisited: advances in the science and practice of eudaimonia . Psychother Psychosom . 2014;83(1):10‐28. doi:10.1159/000353263

Whillans AV, Dunn EW, Smeets P, Bekkers R, Norton MI. Buying time promotes happiness .  Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A . 2017;114(32):8523‐8527. doi:10.1073/pnas.1706541114

Gulacti F. The effect of perceived social support on subjective well-being . Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences . 2010;2(2):3844-3849. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.602

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By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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What Is Happiness? – My Essay On Defining Your Happiness

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We are committed to the highest standards of accuracy and reliability in our content. Every statement made on our website is meticulously fact-checked and supported by authoritative studies.

Read more about our processes here .

Updated on July 11, 2023

Happiness is probably the most pursued factor in life, above wealth, health, and good relationships. We all want to be happy, above everything else, right? Who cares about money when you’re not happy? Who cares about friends when you’re not happy with who you are? Who cares about good health if you’re lonely and depressed?

Happiness is the thing that most people want, yet it is one of the most difficult aspects of life to quantify. How do we measure happiness? How do we define happiness? What is happiness!? This is an essay that explores the many different faces of happiness. As you’ll learn, happiness doesn’t have a single universal definition. Its definition is unique for every single human being out there. Including you.

After reading this essay, you’ll know exactly what happiness is, how to define it for yourself, and even how to find it based on actionable advice.

Definition of happiness

Happiness synonyms, different kinds of happiness, a happy balance, why eternal happiness doesn’t exist, why eternal happiness can still be pursued, defining your own happiness, closing words, what is happiness.

Before starting this essay about happiness, we must at least have a broad idea of what happiness is. Let’s first have a look at how happiness is defined across the web.

Definitions of happiness vary quite a bit across multiple sources. Google thinks happiness is defined as follows:

The state of being happy

You can see how Google is pretty vague about the definition of happiness. Furthermore, it quickly follows with a long list of synonyms.

Wikipedia has a much more interesting definition of what happiness is.

The feeling of an emotion such as pleasure or joy, the appraisal of life satisfaction or the quality of life, subjective well-being and eudaimonia.

Lesson learned? It is really difficult to find a universally correct and agreed-upon definition of what happiness really is.

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Think of all the synonyms that we use to describe feelings that are similar to happiness.

What I like about Google is that it shows synonyms of happiness to people that are looking for its definition.

It’s like they’re saying: “Hey, we don’t know exactly how to define happiness, but here are a couple of concepts that we believe are very much similar!”

The list of synonyms is quite big:

• Contentment
• Satisfaction
• Carefreeness

I think there is a lot we can learn just from the fact that happiness has so many synonyms.

Why? Because these synonyms are all specific variants of what happiness means to me. And I bet you feel the same.

All these different emotions are part of what happiness truly is. And that’s what makes happiness so incredibly difficult to define and measure. It’s a weighted average of all these different synonyms, and the equation of happiness truly changes per person . I’ll even go as far as to say that the happiness equation changes per person per day.

If pleasure makes me happy today, it doesn’t mean that that same amount of pleasure makes me happy tomorrow.

If short-term satisfaction made me happy yesterday, then it won’t necessarily make me happy next week.

What I want you to realize is that your personal definition of happiness is unique. What makes you happy doesn’t necessarily make another person happy. In fact, your definition of happiness is likely a combination of satisfaction, cheeriness, merriment, and jollity.

But the way you personally define happiness will likely change from day to day as well.

And that’s one of the most critical aspects of happiness. That’s also why it’s supposedly so hard to measure and quantify. Here’s an entire article I wrote recently about how difficult it is to define happiness, but you can still try for yourself !

Still with me? Good, because I’m going to add yet another reason why happiness is such a difficult thing to measure!

There are different kinds of happiness. Not just in the way we define happiness, but also in the way we experience it.

As part of this essay, I want to introduce the concepts of short-term and long-term happiness.

Short-term happiness

Short-term happiness is relatively easy to explain. It’s based on small and easy to obtain, yet rather unsustainable happiness. When looking at the list of happiness synonyms, I think the following concepts are clearly centered around short-term happiness:

You see, short-term happiness is based on the release of the chemical dopamine in our brain . This organic chemical is released whenever we are stimulated by things that please us. Some examples are sex, having a laugh with friends, finishing a race, watching a funny video online, or watching an exciting game of football. A more extreme example is drugs.

These things result in short-term happiness because dopamine is released based on a single event. When this event is over, the pleasure is gone. That’s why I consider this to be short-term happiness.

And then there is long-term happiness.

Long-term happiness

Long-term happiness is a little bit harder to explain because it revolves around other concepts of happiness. Instead of joy, pleasure, and ecstasy, the concepts that make up long-term happiness are:

I hope you can spot the difference here. Long-term happiness is created by feeling happy about your purpose in life, the successes that you’ve had and/or the satisfaction of who you are and what you’ve accomplished. Long-term happiness is based on concepts that are not created by a single event. For example, I’m happy at the moment because I’m grateful for the life that I have right now. This happiness is not caused by something I’m doing at this very moment. No, I’m happy because I work hard and have achieved things that I am proud of. I have created a situation in which I am happy by default, without having to rely on single events.

Now that you are aware of these two different kinds of happiness, I want you to picture some scenarios.

• Picture a life in which you spent your youth partying, doing whatever you want to do, using drugs and living without planning for a good future. Sure, you feel pretty happy when doing these things, but you can probably see how this lifestyle will eventually catch up with you, right?

You might have guessed it, but this scenario is focused exclusively on short-term happiness. And the simple fact is that pursuing nothing but short-term happiness does not lead to a sustainable happy life.

Now picture the following scenario:

• You’re in your early twenties and want to become the next Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. You have great ambitions and are incredibly disciplined and inspired to become everything that you think you can become. You spend an incredible amount of time working on your projects, and you even make sacrifices just for the sake of your goals. You don’t have time for sleep, social activities or relationships. Hell, even your health starts to decline. It doesn’t matter though, because you eventually want to reach your goals, and then you’ll be happy right?

This is another extreme example of happiness. You can probably see how this person is very likely unhappy. He is spending the best years of his life making sacrifices in anticipation of what he eventually wants to become. For a lot of people, this sounds like a logical decision. But to me, this sounds like a huge mistake. You might feel satisfied with the progress you’re making, but are you truly happy? If you get in a fatal car crash tomorrow, would you have any regrets?

I want you to think about this for a moment since a lot of people in industrialized countries have the urge to constantly be planning for the future. And while this is not a bad thing in principle, we often take it too far. As a result, we are constantly sprinting from one deadline to the other. Sure, you want to plan for a happy future, but what’s the point of all of this when you’re not happy in the process itself?

The thing is, these extreme examples are not something that you should want. You can only lead a truly happy life when you actively pursue both short-term and long-term happiness.

It’s important to find out what your perfect balance is.

I’m not here to tell you that you should focus 50% of your attention on short-term happiness and the other 50% on long-term happiness. No. I’m here to tell you that you should be aware of your own happiness. Every single person on this planet has a different definition of happiness. You need to find out what happiness means to you, and how you want to pursue it.

They say happiness is a journey and not a destination. I think happiness can – and should – be both.

For me personally, I often notice how much short-term happiness I’m sacrificing in anticipation of long-term happiness. Some examples:

• I go out for a long-distance training run in the pouring rain because I want to eventually finish another marathon in 3 months. I don’t even enjoy the long-distance run but I think that it will eventually lead to a great finish time, and thus long-term happiness.
• Instead of just playing a videogame, I decide to write an essay about my understanding of happiness. Why? Because I think it will grow my website, which will make me happy in the long run.
• I skip a nice snack because I want to maintain my weight

These are some real examples of how I’ve been sacrificing my short-term happiness for long-term happiness. I want you to think of a couple of examples for yourself. Have you ever made a bad decision that resulted in a decreased level of happiness?

Think about some real scenarios that you’ve experienced and whether you should have acted differently.

I’m not saying that sacrificing short-term happiness for long-term happiness is bad. I just want you to know that you need to find a balance. For example, I do actually want to finish my next marathon within a decent time, but I’m not going to make myself miserable by pushing myself to the limit in preparation. That’s not the balance that I’m after.

The thing is, realizing the difference between short-term and long-term happiness makes it easier for us to pursue happiness in our lives.

Pursue happiness, you ask?

Yes! I believe that happiness can actively be pursued and that you can steer your life in the best direction possible by doing this. However, there are a number of people that believe that pursuing happiness is a loser’s game. These people argue that by pursuing happiness , you’ll be more tempted to choose short-term happiness over long-term happiness. This is where the hedonic treadmill will quickly evaporate whatever happiness you’ve created for yourself.

The hedonic treadmill

Imagine something that you would really like to do right now.

What did you think of? Taking a long warm bath? Drinking wine with your friends? Going to an amusement park?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could do that right now? That would definitely have a positive influence on your happiness, right?

Now think about doing that exact thing every day, for the rest of your life, until the day you die.

Do you think you’d still be happy from doing that same thing after the 10th time? Or the 100th time? Or the 1000th time?

The answer is probably no. Even though this example is extreme, the theory of diminishing returns applies here. When repeated, the effect of the same event on your happiness will diminish to zero. That’s because the norms of what defines your happiness are constantly adapting. Your happiness equation transforms with your changing life, whether it’s for better or worse.

One of the best examples of this hedonic treadmill is the following:

Think of a big salary bump. You receive a raise of 50%! Congratulations, you now have money to spend on all kinds of things that make you and your family happy ! Will that happiness sustain into the future? Unfortunately not. Instead of appreciating the luxury of your raise, you will grow accustomed to this extra money and will slowly take it for granted. This adaptation is known as the hedonic treadmill , and it is generally conceived as the arch-enemy of happiness.

Now that you know what this hedonic treadmill is, it might seem like a waste of time to continue reading this essay, right?

NO! While the hedonic treadmill is very much real – I’ll never deny that – I don’t want you to think that greater happiness can’t be achieved. You just need to be willing to actively look for it in the right places.

See, nobody on the internet will be able to define happiness for you. What makes you happy is a constantly changing equation that is unique in every way. Why would you believe some scientist when he or she claims that happiness is impossible to pursue? What does that scientist know about you? Nothing!

It’s up to you to define what makes you happy.

How to find your own happiness

By now, you should know 3 things:

• Your happiness equation is unique. Nobody can tell you what exactly to do in order to be happy.
• You can pursue both short-term happiness and long-term happiness. The key is to find the perfect balance between the two. You can be happy on the journey towards a happy future.
• The hedonic treadmill will diminish the effect events have on your happiness over time.

Let’s combine this knowledge. I want you to realize that you can learn more about your own happiness equation. You can find out what it is that makes you happy.

Got it? Good, because the next step is to define what the difference is between short-term and long-term happiness. You have to find out how much you value your happiness on the journey itself and how much of that happiness you want to sacrifice by investing in a potentially happier future.

Now, what if I told you that a perfect balance between long-term and short-term happiness can limit the effect that the hedonic treadmill has on you?

Yes, by consciously varying the pursuit of short-term and long-term happiness, you can vary the factors in your life in a way that leads to greater happiness. If you are aware of your own happiness equation, you’re able to pursue happiness in the areas where it matters the most.

What I want you to do is consider your personal happiness again for a moment.

Think back at the last week, and remember what things or events had a positive influence on your happiness. Think of the things that really made you smile or feel satisfied with where you were or how you acted.

What came to your mind? Was it work? Was it your relationship? Was it that silly movie you watched? Was it a nice sunny day spent outside? It could be literally anything! What I want most of all now is that you realize how you just measured a part of your happiness.

You see, even though happiness is claimed to be the factor of life that’s the most difficult to measure, you can still measure what is currently part of your happiness equation. It’s simple. For me personally, when I think back to yesterday, I remember that I really enjoyed spending time with my girlfriend, walking through the woods on a sunny day, and just relaxing (a.k.a. doing nothing!)

These are happiness factors that were a vital part of my happiness equation yesterday. It was a weekend day after a long and busy week at work, so I was really trying to find some short-term happiness. The things that I did yesterday were perfect, as it was a very happy day for me.

You should not be surprised if I told you that I was consciously trying to be happy by spending my day doing things that satisfied my short-term happiness.

You can do exactly the same. All you need to do is to define your own happiness.

And with that said, I want to conclude this essay about happiness. Happiness is different for every single human being on this planet. If you arrived at this essay without having a clear idea of what happiness is, I hope you now know that your personal happiness can be defined, measured, and quantified. But only YOU can do this, no one else will be able to tell you what happiness really is. If you are willing to actively pursue greater happiness, I believe you can steer your life in the best direction.

Now it’s time to hear from you! How do you define your own happiness right now? What has been your biggest happiness factor last week? Do you think you can learn from your own happiness?

I’d love to hear all about it in the comments!

Founder of Tracking Happiness, with over 100 interviews and a focus on practical advice, our content extends beyond happiness tracking. Hailing from the Netherlands, I’m a skateboarding enthusiast, marathon runner, and a dedicated data junkie, tracking my happiness for over a decade.

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3 rules from the japanese ‘kintsugi’ philosophy for lasting love.

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The “golden repair” mindset encourages us to see failure as a chance to grow—a lesson we can apply ... [+] to our own lives.

Kintsugi is an ancient Japanese art form that offers a profound metaphor for understanding human relationships. Translating to “golden repair,” Kintsugi involves repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with gold, silver or platinum. Rather than concealing fractures, Kintsugi celebrates them, transforming flaws into exquisite strokes of beauty. Beyond its aesthetic appeal—it speaks to resilience, acceptance and the transformative power of embracing imperfection.

Here are three invaluable insights Kintsugi offers for nurturing healthy relationships and fostering emotional growth.

1. Celebrate Imperfection

At the core of Kintsugi lies the philosophy of wabi-sabi, which embraces imperfection and transience. In Japanese culture, wabi-sabi celebrates the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. Instead of pursuing flawlessness, wabi-sabi encourages acceptance of life’s inevitable changes and finds beauty within them.

Perfectionism in relationships often leads to disappointment and frustration. Studies show that individuals with maladaptive perfectionism tend to experience higher fear of intimacy. Moreover, perfectionism can affect couples’ sexual lives , particularly for women who feel pressured to meet societal or partner expectations, resulting in decreased sexual intimacy and interaction.

Drawing from the teachings of Kintsugi, we can learn to embrace imperfections as integral parts of our shared history. Similar to how Kintsugi reveals the beauty of mended pottery, we can celebrate the growth and resilience that emerge from facing challenges together.

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Rather than expecting flawlessness, it’s important to recognize that no relationship is perfect. By viewing flaws not as obstacles but as integral parts of our partner’s identity and our shared journey, we can transform these imperfections into opportunities for growth and deeper connection. Additionally, accepting imperfections fosters authenticity, creating a safe space where vulnerability is welcome and flaws are met with empathy. This strengthens commitment to the relationship and prepares partners to confront challenges together.

2. Craft Your Resilience

The philosophy of Kintsugi emphasizes that resilience is not merely about bouncing back from adversity but also about embracing the process of repair and renewal. Just like the meticulous process of fixing broken pottery, relationships demand patience, effort and care to mend snags in your relational fabric.

Resilience entails a commitment to working through conflicts and setbacks with love and understanding. Through open communication, empathy and compromise, we fortify the foundation of our relationships and emerge stronger than before. A study published in Women and Therapy suggests that resilience can be nurtured and reinforced in all individuals through engaging in growth-fostering relationships.

For example, openly discussing challenges with a partner strengthens the bond and enhances problem-solving skills. Affirmations and compliments from a partner boost confidence and self-worth. Collaborating on shared goals—like planning a vacation or managing finances— fosters teamwork and empowerment. Engaging in intellectual discussions or sharing hobbies stimulates mutual learning and intellectual growth. Moreover, regular date nights or quality time together deepen the emotional connection and intimacy in the relationship.

Further, just as repaired pottery becomes more valuable and beautiful, our relationships can evolve by overcoming trials. The scars and challenges we navigate together become part of our shared history, enriching the depth and resilience of our bond. Like the seams of gold in Kintsugi, our relationships emerge even more exquisite and precious after the process of repair and renewal.

3. Honor Transformation

Rather than disguising flaws or clinging to past perfection, the act of repairing broken pottery symbolizes and acknowledges the evolution of both objects and relationships over time.

In human relationships, embracing transformation entails allowing each individual to evolve independently while also growing together as a unit. Recognizing and embracing the changes that occur over time fosters ongoing growth and renewal within our relationships. Research confirms that when individuals undergo personal self-expansion—experiencing positive self-change and growth independently from their romantic partner—they also experience heightened passion in their romantic relationships.

Honoring the evolution of our relationship and appreciating the beauty that emerges involves:

• Embracing the journey of transformation with openness and gratitude. A study published in Emotion suggests that gratitude from interactions predicts increased relationship connection and satisfaction, potentially enhancing the relationship.
• Acknowledging that every experience, whether joyful or challenging, contributes to the depth of our shared story.
• Willingness to let go of old patterns and embrace new possibilities. It means allowing ourselves and our partners to evolve and change, while still holding onto the core values and commitments that bind us together.

By embracing change with grace and acceptance, we cultivate a relationship that is adaptable, resilient and brimming with potential.

Could your relationship benefit from the healing properties of the Kintsugi mindset? Take the Relationship Satisfaction Scale to know for sure.

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