Three Theories of Happiness

And why Aristotle still wins.

From the editor of JAT: This guest post comes from João Pinheiro da Silva. Interested in contributing to the Journal of Absolute Truth? Click here for details.

Overview: What does it truly mean to be happy? Is happiness just a fleeting psychological state, or does it encompass something deeper and more enduring? In this article, João Pinheiro da Silva explores three competing conceptions of happiness—psychological, subjective, and objective (eudaimonic)—and argues for the superiority of the Aristotelian eudaimonic account.

1. Three Forms of Happiness

It is never easy to give a straightforward answer to the rather elusive question “Are you happy?”. After all, what do we even mean by “happy” in the first place? In some contexts, a positive answer to that question means nothing more than asserting that one is having a pleasurable time. But there are some instances where by happiness, we mean something more than just feeling happy. To use Richard Kraut’s example, “what are we wishing for when we say of a new-born baby, "I hope he has a happy life"?”[1]. Surely one is not simply wishing the baby that, on the final all-pervasive utilitarian equation that is life, he gets to be on the upper end of the pleasure scale. That is, one is not merely wishing him to generally feel happy but rather for him to be happy.

This feeling/being happy dualism points us to at least two senses of happiness: on the one hand, the psychological sense of happiness; on the other, what is usually called eudaimonia. Whereas a mere psychological view describes happiness as an emotion or feeling that, as such, amounts to little more than a rather fleeting and discrete psychological token; the later eudaimonic sense conceives of happiness as a holistic state of being encompassing not only mental phenomenon but the entire life, situation and relations of a given subject.

Eudaimonic accounts of happiness thus state that, in its fullest sense, happiness requires more than merely engaging in pleasurable or soothing activity. In fact, eudaimonia allows for an individual to still be happy even when going through long periods of pain. According to Kraut, this is possible because, when we say that an individual is happy, we mean that his life has met a certain standard and that standard is not reducible to just mental or psychological phenomena. But whereas on Kraut’s approach one is happy when his life meets a certain subjective standard, the classical Aristotelian approach states that such standard of eudaimonia is objective, that is, not determined or dependent on the subject.

This gets us three candidates for a theory of happiness: 1) a psychological, 2) a subjective, and 3) an objective (or eudaimonic) conception of happiness.

This essay presents a defense of the objective (eudaimonic) conception of happiness as not only encompassing the virtues of its rival theories while accounting for its flaws but also as a better account of what we ultimately mean by being happy in contrast to merely feeling happy.

2. Psychological Accounts of Happiness

Two contemporary defenses of psychological accounts of happiness can be found in the works of Daniel M. Haybron and Fred Feldman. Even though distinct at several points, both authors defend a view of happiness as “subjective well-being” (one should not mistake their sense of “subjective” with Kraut’s). In Haybron’s parlance, subjective well-being is a set of “central affective states” or “mood propensities”[2]; Feldman, on the other hand, takes it to be an intrinsic “attitudinal pleasure”[3]. In both cases, happiness is tantamount to perfectly measurable, fleeting and episodic psychological atoms. As Tom Angier puts it, both Haybron and Feldman think “happiness is a subjective state, exhaustively determined by individual subjects’ positive or affirmative relation to their own experience”[4].

Contrary to eudaimonistic conceptions of happiness that are necessarily holistic, these theories are atomistic. Instead of considering happiness in the wider context of a person’s general existential narrative, they take happiness to be “nothing over and above a type of mental state”[5] that is ultimately isolable from such context.

The great problem with viewing happiness as “nothing over and above a type of mental state” is that mental states can be manipulated. As Amartya Sen has thoroughly argued[6], there has to be something more than just feeling happy to being happy since it would be strange to say that someone who has been exploited or manipulated to have positive “central affective states” or “mood propensities” is genuinely happy. But on an account of happiness with no criteria beyond the merely psychological, it becomes difficult to say why a manipulated person is not genuinely happy.

That is why subjective well-being theorists have a hard time with limit cases such as Robert Nozick’s “experience machine”[7]. In his famous thought-experiment, Nozick asks us to imagine an experience machine that would stimulate our brains so as to make us have any experience one desires - “writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book” – whilst all the time being just “floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain”. Should we plug in? Nozick thinks not. For the reality and authenticity of our experiences are just as important as the experiences themselves. Nozick ultimately argues that even though people may experience great pleasure in that machine-induced reality, they would not be actually satisfied living in that state as something crucial to real happiness and fulfilment would always be missing: its reality and authenticity.

But appealing to authenticity leads one beyond a merely psychological theory of happiness. It adds an objective criterion for happiness that is not reducible or measurable in psychological terms. Haybron tries to evade the problem by arguing that “unless you have an experience machine problem in your polity, such possibilities don’t much matter for most practical purposes”[8]. But dealing with a thought experiment by pointing out its impracticality in the real world is hardly persuasive as the point of the thought experiment goes beyond its practicality: it makes us question whether there is something more to a happy life than perpetually receiving machine-induced positive mental stimuli. And that is where psychological theories of happiness fall short since in order to give a satisfactory answer to the experience machine, one has to normatively enrich the concept of happiness so as to go beyond its mere psychological significance.

3. Subjective Accounts of Happiness

When arguing that there has to be more than merely feeling happy to being happy, Amartya Sen was pointing to the need for something like an “autonomy condition” on happiness. That is, in order to avoid the aforementioned problem with psychological theories of happiness – the possibility of manipulation – one needs to add a condition for happiness: that it is the product of an autonomous life.

It is a form of this “autonomy condition” that also animates Kraut’s subjective view of happiness. As Kraut puts it: “when we ask someone, "What will make you happy? What is your idea of happiness?", we are not requesting that he specify the conditions under which he will be in a certain psychological state [… but rather] the standards he imposes on himself, and the goals he is seeking. And this makes us hesitant to say that the deceived man is happy or has a happy life”[9]. That is, there is something more to being happy than just experiencing a given psychological state: one has to value that state. Kraut thus concludes that if the deceived or manipulated man comes to discover his own deception, “he should say that although his feeling of happiness [in the psychological sense] was based on an illusion, it really did exist. At no time, however, was he really leading a happy life [in a stronger not merely psychological sense]”[10].

In order to deal with cases of deceiving and manipulation of one’s mental states, Kraut enriched the concept of happiness by adding a normative condition to it: “a person is happy only if he meets the standards he imposes on his life”[11]. This subjective view of happiness, according to Kraut, on top of dealing with the problems of psychological theories, also avoids what Kraut takes to be the “inhumane” and “restrictive” consequences of more demanding objective views of happiness such as Aristotle’s.

Kraut’s evaluation of objective views of happiness emerges from his own intellectualist interpretation of Aristotelian eudaimonia as consisting solely of contemplation (with ethical activity being a mere means to that end)[12]. This rough reading of Aristotle will make Kraut conclude that, according to an Aristotelian objectivist view of happiness, permanently handicapped people would be incapable of attaining eudaimonia and, since they cannot meet that objective criterion for happiness, they should feel dissatisfied with their lives. Thus, his assertion that “there is something inhumane about Aristotle's doctrine”[13]. On Kraut’s own account of happiness, on the other hand, it would be perfectly possible for a permanently handicapped person to be happy in his own circumstances. Such a person would just need to meet “a standard which reflects his unalterable capacities and circumstances”[14].

But Kraut’s criticism rests on several misconceptions. Regarding the case of the permanently handicapped person, consider first a tetraplegic. It is certainly not clear that a tetraplegic is unable to meet Aristotle’s criterion for eudaimonia. According to Aristotle, eudaimonia is the “activity of soul in conformity with virtue”[15] and there is nothing impeding the tetraplegic from cultivating a number of different virtues. And even if one follows Kraut’s narrow intellectualist reading of book X of NE according to which eudaimonia is nothing more than contemplation, it is not clear why the tetraplegic would be incapable of contemplation (the exercise of his nous) either. It is thus not obvious that physical impairments – even grave ones – make eudaimonia unachievable.

However, things get more difficult for the Aristotelian when dealing not with physical but grave mental impairments. If someone is mentally impaired to the point of not even being aware of the world around him, then it would be difficult to both cultivate the virtues or engage in contemplative activity. But at the same time, it is hard to see how a person so gravely impaired could even meet Kraut’s own criterion of happiness. Would that person be capable of determining his own criterion of happiness? It is not clear that Aristotle’s eudaimonia is as “inhumane” as Kraut thinks it is. If it is indeed inhumane, it is just as inhumane as his own theory.

But with the case of the permanently handicapped person, Kraut is not only trying to show the inhumaneness of Aristotelian eudaimonia but also its narrowness and restrictiveness. And it is indeed undeniable that Aristotle’s theory is more restrictive than his own. But it seems that Kraut’s lack of restrictiveness makes his conception of happiness problematic. For example, nothing prevents, in Kraut’s account, a murderer from being considered perfectly happy. To the extent that the murderer meets his own subjective criterion of happiness, he is happy. And it seems perfectly possible that this criterion is related to the number of murders he commits. Note that the same problem applies to psychological views of happiness as the murderer may indeed be in a “psychologically happy” state while killing. Of course, Kraut rejects this reading of happiness but he is still unable to provide good enough reasons for not considering the murderer happy.

4. Objective (or Eudaimonic) Accounts of Happiness

Going back to Kraut’s initial example, “what are we wishing for when we say of a new-born baby, "I hope he has a happy life"?”[16]. Kraut is certainly right that, when we wish a new-born a happy life, we mean something more than just having pleasant and positive mental states. After all, the “new-born child might become retarded-yet still live happily; he might be enslaved, or blinded, or severely incapacitated in other ways - yet still live happily”[17]. However, are we merely wishing that the new-born goes on to fulfil his own subjective criterion of happiness, no matter how vicious that criterion is? That also does not seem quite right.

What we actually mean when we wish a happy life to that new-born is something closer to Aristotle’s eudaimonia: that he flourishes according to his nature, that he cultivates and fulfils his virtues (or fulfils his dispositions in accordance with the moral good) and thus lives a life that is meaningful even in its worst moments.

Aristotelian (or objective) approaches to eudaimonia manage to deal with the problem of the happy murderer by having a more holistic conception of happiness as necessarily tied to the moral good. As has been noted before, eudaimonia is the “activity of soul in conformity with virtue”[18]. As such, a life lacking in virtue is, according to Aristotle, necessarily unhappy and unfulfilled.

And this focus on virtue also further explains how one can be happy even when not feeling happy. Whereas in taking happiness to be nothing more than attitudinal pleasure or amusing moods, Feldman and Haybron see suffering as necessarily contrary to happiness, eudaimonic accounts take flourishing to be unattainable without some degree of suffering. That happens because the cultivation and practice of virtue is not a permanently pleasurable, joyful or tranquil affair. In order to grow in temperance, one must resist temptations; in order to build courage, one has to face danger. The ability to experience pain and suffering without succumbing, without ceasing to be happy is, in fact, one of the marks of the true eudaimon[19].

Feldman and Haybron take happiness to be nothing more than a psychological item, one more discrete inhabitant of our inner landscape of feelings, moods and attitudes. In Aristotelian terms, they hold an “efficient” view of happiness. Feldman even creates a way of “measuring happiness”: if “an atom of happiness is an episode in which a person takes intrinsic attitudinal pleasure in something”[20], then it is possible to calculate a person's happiness at a determinate moment. But according to Aristotle, eudaimonia should not be understood in efficient but rather in formal terms. As Angier makes clear: “In Aristotle’s terms, eudaimonia is the kind of telos to which there are means, but means, specifically, pros to telos— viz., “internal” or “component” means—rather than means that are external to their end”[21]. That is, eudaimonia is not a token or item “beyond activity”[22] but rather “nothing substantive over and above (long-term) engagement in good action”[23]. Eudaimonia thus informs our whole being. As such, it is nothing more than the consummation of our human goods, not something distinct from them.

Whereas feeling happy is a state of mind; being happy is a state of being, the flourishing of the human being as a whole. And if one wants to thoroughly account for that difference, one has to ultimately embrace an objective view of happiness. To go beyond the merely psychological level, we have to normatively enrich the concept of happiness. But in doing so, we are bound to get to an objective view of it.

Even Kraut can’t quite avoid this. In order to overcome the psychological views of happiness, he adds a normative condition to happiness (a form of the autonomy condition). So even in his account, it is not up to me to decide that my subjective criterion of happiness is to have no subjective criterion of happiness and just be an automaton. That is, there is something to normative conditions that goes beyond the merely subjective. As Daniel Russell puts it: “the autonomy condition is not a requirement on well-being as such, but only on human well-being in particular. [… It] attaches to us not merely as subjects of well-being, but as specifically human subjects of well-being”[24]. So even Kraut is, in a way, an objectivist presupposing an objective view of human well-being. The question thus becomes whether his “subjective” condition is enough to fully grasp what we mean by being happy as a fully flourishing human being and that, as the happy murderer example shows, he can’t quite do.

One could indeed debate whether some of Aristotle’s specific objective criteria for eudaimonia are reasonable or even morally acceptable. And one may as well conclude, with Kraut, that he is too “intellectualist” and that his conception of happiness is too narrow. But those discussions go beyond the breadth of this essay. That is, one may indeed debate what should be the objective criteria for happiness. What is not up for grabs, if one wants to have a robust conception of happiness, is whether those criteria should be objective or not.

About João Pinheiro da Silva

João Pinheiro da Silva is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of St Andrews (FCT PhD Studentship), working on the metaphysics of science. He holds an MA in Philosophy from Central European University.is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of St Andrews (FCT PhD Studentship), working on the metaphysics of science. He holds an MA in Philosophy from Central European University.

Bibliography

Angier, Tom . "Happiness: Overcoming the Skill Model." International Philosophical Quarterly 55, no. 1 (2015): 5-23.

Angier, Tom. "Happiness as Subjective Well-Being: An Aristotelian Critique." Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 76, no. 1 (2020): 149-180.

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Vol. 2, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Feldman, Fred . What Is This Thing Called Happiness? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Haybron, Daniel M. The Pursuit of Unhappiness. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2008.

Kraut, Richard. "Two Conceptions of Happiness." The Philosophical Review 88, no. 2 (1979): 167-197 .

LeBar, Mark. "Good For You." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 85 (2004): 195–217.

Nozick, Robert. Anarchy State and Utopia. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.

Russell, Daniel C. . Happiness for Humans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Sen, Amartya. On Ethics and Economics. Oxford: Blackwell, 1987.

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[1] Kraut, Richard. "Two Conceptions of Happiness." The Philosophical Review 88, no. 2 (1979): 187.

[2] Haybron, Daniel. The Pursuit of Unhappiness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 128-138.

[3] Feldman, Fred. What Is This Thing Called Happiness? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 109-117.

[4] Angier, Tom. "Happiness as Subjective Well-Being: An Aristotelian Critique." Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 76, no. 1 (2020): 152.

[5] Angier, Tom. "Happiness: Overcoming the Skill Model." International Philosophical Quarterly 55, no. 1 (2015): 8.

[6] Sen, Amartya. On Ethics and Economics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).

[7] Nozick, Robert. Anarchy State and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 42-45.

[8] Haybron, Daniel. The Pursuit of Unhappiness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 148

[9] Kraut, Richard. "Two Conceptions of Happiness." The Philosophical Review 88, no. 2 (1979): 178

[10] Ibid.: 179, emphasis added.

[11] Ibid.: 181, emphasis added.

[12] For criticisms of Kraut’s interpretation, see Roche, Timothy, “The Practical Life, the Contemplative Life, and the Perfect Eudaimonia in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 10.7-8”, Logos and Episteme 10, no 1 (2019): 31-49 and Bush, S. S., “Divine and Human Happiness in Nicomachean Ethics”, Philosophical Review 117, no. 1 (2008): 49–75.

[13] Kraut, Richard. "Two Conceptions of Happiness." The Philosophical Review 88, no. 2 (1979): 194.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Vol. 2, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, edited by Jonathan Barnes. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1098a16–17.

[16] Kraut, Richard. "Two Conceptions of Happiness." The Philosophical Review 88, no. 2 (1979): 187.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Vol. 2, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, edited by Jonathan Barnes. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1098a16–17.

[19] Ibid., 1100b18-23.

[20] Feldman, Fred. What Is This Thing Called Happiness? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 239.

[21] Angier, Tom. "Happiness: Overcoming the Skill Model." International Philosophical Quarterly 55, no. 1 (2015): 9.

[22] Ibid., 10.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Russell, Daniel. Happiness for Humans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 41-42.