Most People Desire Happiness, But Does the Pursuit of Happiness Afford A Good Life?

Immanuel Kant provided a clear distinction between happiness and the good life when he argued that the good life is a life worthy of happiness: the good life is morally more fundamental than the happy life. I contend that the good life is based on three essentials: worthwhile activities, worthwhile character, and worthwhile relationships. Making our and other lives better, exercising moral principles, and developing a sense of fellowship are the underpinnings of a good life. Happiness is a bonus, an ephemeral state of being that is much sought after and overvalued.

There is a whole industry devoted to happiness: positive psychology, hedonic psychology, happiness studies, and happiness economics. Philosophers get involved as well because their interest in happiness dates back to Aristotle. In his Nicomachean Ethics (NE) Aristotle used the term eudaimonia, which was translated as happiness. The translation was accurate then because happiness, like eudaimonia, had a moral component. Today eudaimonia is translated as flourishing because the word happiness has lost its moral punch, and flourishing more aptly captures what Aristotle had in mind: a life that benefits us, a life that is good for us (Aristotle, NE). This leads to the questions: Is a good life necessarily a happy life? Does happiness make our life a good one? No and no. Happiness is neither necessary nor sufficient for a good life.

We all have nuanced feelings, emotions, and satisfactions and we describe them with hundreds of different terms, among which are joyful and sad, cheerful and dour, exuberant, elated, jubilant, pleasant, fulfilled, blissful, and more. Psychological surveys ask people whether they are happy, how happy they are, and when they are happy. What are they really asking? They are asking how we feel. In one of the best books on happiness, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, the economist Sir Richard Layard says, ‘By “happiness” I mean feeling good. Enjoying life and wanting the feeling to be maintained’. He further notes that happiness isn't entirely subjective because we can survey friends, do brain scans, and check cortisol levels for indicators of a happy emotional state (Layard Reference Layard2011: 11–45).

Academics require a further distinction between happiness and life-satisfaction (Haybron Reference Haybron2013: 38). The distinction between subjective, emotional well-being and life satisfaction can be clearly seen in the life of Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. His brother Paul, a concert pianist, said he couldn't practise when Ludwig was around because Ludwig's scepticism seeped under the door. Since three of Wittgenstein's siblings committed suicide, his dreary demeanour might have had a genetic component (Gottlieb Reference Gottlieb2009). Yet, on his deathbed, dying young from cancer, he said, ‘Please tell them I had a wonderful life’ (Malcolm Reference Malcolm1984: 81). Wonderful? He earned a degree in engineering and served in the Austrian army during the First World War. It was a miserable experience. Conditions were horrible after the war, and being one of the richest men in Europe, Wittgenstein gave his money away, taught at an elementary school, and made monumental contributions to mathematical logic, psycholinguistics, and several areas of philosophy. During the Second World War, he served as a porter in a hospital in England. Despite his extremely austere, self-imposed lifestyle, he had many devoted friends (Malcolm Reference Malcolm1984: 3–20). However, I don't think we would call him happy. World events and his environs did not contribute to Wittgenstein's experience of subjective or emotional well-being. It was his character and moral compass, endeavours and accomplishments, and friendships that shaped a life with which he deserved to be satisfied. So, yes, he had a wonderful life.

Subjective well-being is not being well: it is feeling good because you think you are doing well. You could be well and not realize it or be unwell and be mistaken. Note too that life satisfaction is not living a satisfactory life: it is feeling satisfied with your life. You could be satisfied with a lousy life or dissatisfied with a satisfactory life. Consider Mother Theresa. She brought comfort to many. Was she happy? Her life was good. I suspect she was not satisfied by what she accomplished, but as she strove to improve the lives of others, she deserved to be happy. Mother Theresa was a saint who lived a good life. By contrast, Adolf Hitler was a lackadaisical artist, a bully, a dictator, a liar, a megalomaniac, but was he happy? In his pursuit of world dominance, did he ever experience subjective well-being? Perhaps. More to the point, he lived a mean and malevolent life, one undeserving of happiness. If he had been allowed to fulfil his creation of an Aryan master race to the ruination of countless more lives, would he have found happiness? Perhaps. But he would not have been worthy of it.

There are many sources of happiness. Some of us seek power, fame, and fortune in the belief that they will bring us happiness. The notion that personal wealth will bring happiness has generated an enormous number of studies. About forty years ago, the economist Richard Easterlin published research that he claimed shows that beyond a certain point, increases in income do not cause increases in happiness. Some years later in their report ‘Subjective Well-Being and Income: Is There Any Evidence of Satiation?’ the economists Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolfers point out that Easterlin failed to notice the logarithmic diminishing sensitivity. A 10,000-dollar increase in the income of Bill Gates would have an unnoticeable effect, while a 10,000-dollar increase in the income of David Louzecky would cause personal rejoicing. Stevenson and Wolfers also claim that Easterlin failed to distinguish subjective, emotional well-being from life satisfaction.

Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist, and Sir Angus Deaton, an economist, both Nobel laureates in economics, published a study that they claim shows that although life satisfaction continued to increase with increases in income, subjective, emotional well-being stops increasing at $75,000. Kahneman said it is the flattest curve he's ever seen. Stevenson and Wolfers replied that both subjective, emotional well-being and life satisfaction continue increasing, and Easterlin has published new work that he says supports his original claim that more money does not mean more happiness (Layard Reference Layard2011: 15).

The problem with money is making it the main objective. Health constitutes a reasonable analogy. I should not make health my goal and spend all my time and energy on my health. I should do reasonable things to preserve and promote my health because my health is important for doing worthwhile things. In the same way, I should earn enough money to provide opportunities for engaging in worthwhile endeavours. Money is the bottom line in business, not the goal of a good life. The entrepreneur looks around for ways to make money. The person leading a good life looks for worthwhile enterprises.

Financial security can be a source of happiness, but another source, the one that registers as most important on Layard's list, is having sex (Haybron Reference Haybron2013: 47). Second from the bottom on this list is working. As one of my students pointed out, most of us spend precious little time having sex and an awful lot of time working. How can we possibly be as happy as we say we are? On surveys, 94% of us report being happy (Layard Reference Layard2011: 15). Sex, of course, is about more than just feeling good and reproducing. Love and friendship are integral to a good life.

In the middle of Layard's list of activities that reportedly make us happy are shopping, preparing food, and talking on the phone (Matthews Reference Matthews2013). These are such easy activities that it's no wonder that almost everyone is happy. Then why all the ink on happiness? Why all the studies? Perhaps it is because being happy is not enough. We want our lives to be worthwhile as well. Working might be the sort of activity that helps us accomplish something worthwhile with our lives and become a person of character. To have a good life one needs to do something worthwhile because there is nothing beneficial about taking up space and resources that others could use to improve their lives and the lives of others.

What sort of activity is worthwhile? Producing a benefit is important but making the effort is just as important. Jonas Salk serves as a premier example. Hundreds of scientists worked on creating a polio vaccine. Salk arrived at a solution first. He received the accolades, but that doesn't mean other researchers weren't also doing good work.

Even if these other scientists did not discover anything particularly useful, they contributed towards the discovery, a worthwhile activity. It is a serious mistake to describe good activities using athletic metaphors. Salk was not the winner of a race. Everyone benefited from his development of a vaccine because life became less dangerous and suffering is reduced. Salk's solution was facilitated by the efforts of others. All those who were working towards a cure should think well of themselves for they were engaged in worthwhile activity.

It should be noted that Salk was not awarded the Nobel Prize. When Edward R. Murrow asked him who owned the patent on the polio vaccine, Salk responded, ‘Well the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?’ Salk was interested in worthwhile work and in benefiting the community; he was not interested in being a businessman and making money. He was insufficiently entrepreneurial and far too concerned with the welfare of his neighbours (Palmer Reference Palmer2014).

If you want a good life, then you must find meaningful work. Although the world is full of opportunities to do something worthwhile, finding and fulfilling one's vocation is not easy. You might need some education and training, which take years of hard work. And you might have to sacrifice present enjoyments for future rewards. That is one reason good character is a necessary part of a good life. How do we develop the courage, generosity, honesty, and habits of hard work to do worthwhile things? In this respect we haven't improved upon Aristotle. Try it. Try it again. And again. Keep trying until it develops into a practice and your skill improves. When one builds character, doing good becomes a habit (Aristotle, NE).

If you focus on the happiness you will derive from an activity, whether playing golf or rendering humanitarian aid in Syria, your misplaced focus will detract from the activity itself. Since the happiness you derive depends on the quality of the activity and its flow, your focus on happiness will detract from the quality and its flow, and hence from the happiness you derive. The more you focus on happiness, the less happiness you will experience. This is called the paradox of pleasure. The paradox of pleasure is not merely a practical matter of enhancing our pleasure. It is also a twisted view of motivation. We shouldn't play golf or render aid in order to derive happiness (pleasure, satisfaction). We should play golf and render aid because we care about the game or the people. If we didn't care, we would not find these activities satisfying.

Remember Hurricane Katrina? Some of my students packed up mid-semester to help with the disaster relief. They returned in debt because they had to supplement their expenses with their credit cards, but they did some good and deserve to be happy about it. Did my students go to Katrina to make themselves happy, or did they go to help? I hope they were happy because they were able to provide relief, not the other way around.

Some returned unhappy. They were frustrated by their inability to do more and pained by the squalor and misery that the residents were unable to escape. Just think how unhappy they would have been in Syria or South Sudan. Nevertheless, their activities were worthwhile and they deserved to be happy.

My garbage gets picked up weekly. Consider the importance of sanitation work. One of my neighbours repairs automobiles. Another makes plumbing fixtures. Another snow ploughs the streets. These are good people, the ones who make things and provide services. They certainly aren't rich celebrities, but their lives are good. These are people upon whom we rely, people who make our lives better. They deserve life satisfaction as well as happiness.

If you want to live a good life, you should care whether you are a good person. You should care about your own character because good people will have little to do with you if you are unprincipled. It is important to be educated and engaged in worthwhile activities because these attract like-minded, interesting people. Of course, interesting people are not necessarily good people, and having the company of good people is clearly beneficial. Life is a difficult affair, and good people can make it better. There is a utilitarian aspect here, as there is with most everything moral, but there is also a non-utilitarian aspect. Even if you are as wealthy as Jeff Bezos and can provide for everything money can buy, you can't buy love, trustworthiness, respect, or intimacy. You can buy psychotherapy but not friendship. You can buy groupies and trophy spouses, but not companions who love you. Many of the things one cannot buy are valuable (Sandel Reference Sandel2012). Interesting people are not attracted to uninteresting people – and good people avoid interactions with bad people. Uninteresting people are dull, and bad people are dangerous.

Imagine the sort of people with whom you would agree to go mountain climbing: people who are interested in going mountain climbing, interested in learning more about mountain climbing, and virtuous, for example, courageous, trustworthy, loyal. You're going mountain climbing because you have an interest in the experience. That also means you enjoy sharing your knowledge and learning more about mountain climbing. Since mountain climbing is dangerous, you are not going to entrust your life to people who will cut the rope as soon as they encounter risk. People who care about no one but themselves are not great mountaineering partners. Narcissism precludes living well.

Perhaps you don't want to go mountain climbing. You may want to start a business, run for political office, get married, have children. Almost anything you choose to do in your life is going to be done with someone and will involve some risk, if not actual danger. You could, of course isolate yourself from others and live in a hermitage. Even if that appeals to you, you still must depend on others for food, clothing, shelter, and health care.

We are by nature social animals. Henry David Thoreau built a cabin at Walden Pond in order to gain some distance from the hurly-burly world. We could probably all benefit from some time alone to read, think, and write. Or hunt, fish, and build a cabin with our hands. Nevertheless, Thoreau did walk into town regularly for supplies and to talk with his neighbours (Thoreau Reference Thoreau1995).

Christopher Knight walked into the Maine woods and lived alone without talking to anyone until he was captured twenty-seven years later (Finkel Reference Finkel2018). Although his survival skills were quite amazing, he did have to sneak out of the forest occasionally to steal necessities from nearby cottages: clothing, food, batteries, matches, reading material.

Thoreau was quite reasonable, for we all need some time away from email, traffic jams, the oppression of stressed-out bosses, and the clatter of noisy restaurants. Knight on the other hand is an outlier. I'm not claiming a need to interact with other humans, although such a case could be made. The case I want to make is that good and interesting interactions with other human beings make our lives better. This is a claim about value, not psychology.

In our modern world, you could live almost as alone and isolated as Knight. You could plant a garden, sew your own clothes, and burn wood. You could shop at Wal-Mart at 3 a.m., pay your electric and water bills online, and have everything else delivered from Amazon Prime. Your life in such a state of nature, however, will be, according to Thomas Hobbes, ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’. Perhaps that is exactly what you want. The fact that you want to live in that manner does not, however, make it a good life. Unless you are ascetic, you are interested in a certain amount of commodious living. In addition, you are a social creature who finds loving relationships and friendships not merely utilitarian and enjoyable but deeply satisfying and meaningful.

While you may value friends because they are enjoyable and accommodating companions, there is more to friendship than another person's usefulness. Loving relationships and friendships are, in and of themselves, intrinsic goods for creatures like us. Friendships are founded on selflessness, conscientious support, and genuine concern for another's welfare. In Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals, Immanuel Kant advised that one should, ‘Act in such a way as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of anyone else, always as an end and never merely as a means’ (Kant Reference Kant and Wood2002: 46–7). Worthwhile relationships expand an individual's character, world perspective and sense of well-being – all aspects of a good person's good life and happiness.

As Layard points out, we can do brain scans, check cortisol levels, and survey friends; nevertheless, happiness is subjective. The good feelings are the happiness. It does not follow, however, that happiness is entirely different for each of us because the good feelings are partially tied to biology. In addition, a focus on difference distorts our surprisingly similar social lives. We have parents, live in communities, and experience a wide variety of pleasures and pains.

It also does not follow that whatever makes us happy is good for us. People enjoy excessive amounts of recreational drugs. They also enjoy making the lives of others miserable. If happiness is the end or goal of the good life, and it's different for each of us, then it might seem that we are justified in doing whatever, or almost whatever, makes us happy, even if it is mean or vile. A focus on happiness feeds nihilism, that is, a focus on feeling good that eschews moral reasoning. At bottom, nihilism is the view that there is no rational ground for morality: life is meaningless, even absurd. Unlike happiness, however, the good life has a fundamental moral component.

Being satisfied with your life depends on where you set the bar, and success is easy if you set the bar low enough. People who dwell in Calcutta's slums report high levels of happiness. Even people on dialysis report high levels of happiness (Layard Reference Layard2011: 45). It is good that they are happy, but we shouldn't confuse happiness with a good life. A good life is one that is deserving of happiness. It requires worthwhile activity, worthwhile character, and worthwhile relationships.

Happiness is relative as well as subjective. The East Germans are reported to have been happier before reunification than they were shortly after because they were less aware of their relatively poor situation (Haybron Reference Haybron2013: 38). There are many studies demonstrating that ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ is no suburban myth. If your life is good, it probably has little to do with the conspicuous consumption of your neighbours. How you feel is subjective and relative, but whether your activities, character, and relationships are good is neither subjective nor relative.

Robert Nozick aptly summarizes the importance of and confusion regarding happiness:

The good life provides meaning, fulfilment, and satisfaction. The quality of an individual's life, a good life, is a matter of one's strength of character and abilities, career choices and relationships. Happiness is not integral to the good life. Happiness simply enhances a life that is worthy of happiness.