Happiness

We explain what happiness is for philosophy and its questions. Also, what it meant for the main thinkers of Ancient Greece and for religions.

What is happiness?

Happiness is a philosophical concept that is investigated from different branches of the discipline, such as politics, theology, and, especially, ethics. Due to its subjective nature and the fact that it is conditioned by the time in which it is thought, happiness is a difficult concept to define.

Despite the difficulty in finding a unanimous definition of happiness, there are different features that these definitions share. In general, happiness is linked to an idea of ​​personal appreciation whose subjective character varies according to social condition, age, degree of culture and one's own social realization. Each person's ideal of happiness is based on their subjectivity, and is also the result of a cultural and social construction.

The question about what happiness is is the question about the possibility of happiness itself: those who wonder about it assume it, but to find it (if that is possible), they must know what it is. While some authors consider that happiness is a good, others maintain that it is a feeling, an emotion, a mental state and even a mental disposition of the body.

Throughout the history of philosophy, many authors worked on the idea of ​​happiness. From ancient Greece to the contemporary world, thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Saint Augustine, Spinoza and Bertrand Russel have written about it. Even other sciences, such as sociology or psychology, work on this matter, under their own methodologies.

Happiness in the Greek world

Many Greek philosophers reflected on happiness. Plato, for example, in his dialogue Filebowonders what happiness consists of. While one of his characters answers that it is pleasure, another of them says that happiness is wisdom. As in all of Plato's dialogues, the question ends unresolved, although, it is true, the idea is suggested that Happiness is a balanced combination of pleasure and wisdom..

Other philosophical schools also sought an idea of ​​happiness. Epicureanism, for example, understood happiness as self-sufficiency based on the idea of ​​moderate pleasure. Stoicism, on the other hand, held happiness as a form of individual strength, supported by the acceptance of a certain existence.

Aristotle, a disciple of Plato, states in his Ethics for Nicomachus that He is happy who lives and does wellsince happiness is a life of upright and happy conduct. Aristotle maintains that man is a composite of body and soul. From this it follows that happiness is one good among many, since the human being is not a single thing. Well, there are two forms of happiness: the solitary one, which is eternal, and the one referred to the everyday man, which consists of the sum of all goods. He who achieves virtue is he who possesses all goods and, thus, happiness.

Happiness as Aristotelian “eudaimonia”

“Eudaimonia” is a term used by Aristotle, which is generally translated as “happiness.” However, in the philosopher's works, eudaimonia is used as a synonym for “good fortune.” Whoever receives the adjective “eudaimon” is one who is under the assistance of some divinity (in Greek “daimon”).

Although Plato was the first to translate the term to talk about the good life, Aristotle placed it in the realm of morality, stating that eudaimonia is the good lifefrom the moral perspective. For him, there is no happy life (“eudaímon”) without virtue (“areté”).

At the same time, eudaimonia has to do with permanence and stability, since it is a state that is characterized by being a feeling opposite to what is transitory.

Following Aristotle, happiness, as eudaimonia, is the ultimate or supreme good to which one aspires. This supreme good shares the following characteristics:

• Eudaimonia is the ultimate end, and for it all things are made.
• Eudamonia as the ultimate goal must be complete.
• Eudaimonia as a complete good has to be self-sufficient.
• Eudaimonia as self-sufficient cannot be increased by the addition of other goods.

Happiness as Epicurean “eudaimonia”

Like Aristotle, Epicurus also spoke of happiness as eudaimonia in the sense of a full life. However, Epicurus' philosophy is hedonistic, that is, it maintains that pleasure is the only intrinsic good that can be aspired to. This means that things are good if they bring pleasure and, on the other hand, they are bad if they produce pain or displeasure (which is the absence of pleasure, and not necessarily something painful).

In this sense, Epicurus maintained that Eudaimonia was a continuous experience of pleasure, free of pain and anguish.. The Epicurean doctrine can be thought of as a doctrine of happiness, since it is offered as a remedy against pain and suffering of the soul and body.

Its objective is to give simple guidelines or recommendations to guide thought and action towards happiness as an end in itself. Happiness is, then, something that can be acquired, but it is also acquired permanently: it is a state that we aspire to reach.

Happiness in Christianity and Saint Augustine

The arrival of Christianity meant a reconversion of the idea of ​​happiness. The translation of the Greek “eudaimonia” into Latin resulted in what is known as “happiness.”

Happiness was supposed to be the ultimate goal of human existence, as described, for example, by Saint Thomas in the 18th century. Thomas maintained that happiness consisted of a beatific vision of the essence of God, to which every Christian should aspire.

A beatific vision is a vision that, in addition to being peaceful (because it gives serenity), also produces placidity. This serenity and this placidity are given by the divine component involved in the vision. This is happiness for Saint Thomas.

The ideas of Saint Thomas were partially supported by the ideas of Saint Augustine, also known as Augustine of Hippo. His opinions arise from his position regarding the ideas of good and evil. Unlike Manichaeism, which held that evil and good are two equal entities, for Augustine, evil was only the absence of good. Thus, evil owes its existence to good because it is a corrupted good or it is the lack of that good.

From this it follows that, although evil cannot exist without good, it may be the case that good exists without evil. The Augustinian doctrine exemplifies this with the idea of ​​God as a supreme being: the only pure and perfect being, who is the sum of all goods and powers. The idea of ​​happiness lives in the idea of ​​God, since The ultimate goal of the human being is to aspire to goodand that is what a happy life consists of.

Saint Augustine set a clear precedent for a hypothetical-moral imperative: how to act in every situation. For him, happiness consists in the practice of virtues, to direct life towards God, that is, towards absolute good. God is the center of existence and only in his entity (immutable and infinite) can happiness occur as truth, goodness and permanence.

This idea of ​​happiness as the maximum enjoyment of the truth (which considers God as the equivalent of truth, and therefore, happiness), was taken up by Christian thinkers and philosophers after Saint Augustine. The inclination to believe that only a life in God is a happy life It is based on the Augustinian conception of happiness.

Saint Thomas reconciled this conception with the Aristotelian view of happiness as eudaimonia. If for Aristotle happiness was the maximum good that could be aspired to, Saint Thomas shared this idea with the Augustinian conception that this good itself is God in himself.

Happiness in Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was a British philosopher, mathematician and writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Among the numerous philosophical problems to which he dedicated his work, we can find the question of happiness.

Russell adopted an idea of ​​happiness based on moderate empiricism. Believing that happiness was not a rationalist ideal, He held that happiness was completely dependent on each person for themselves and external circumstances. in which each one was involved.

Happiness depends, according to Russel, on the following factors:

• The friendly interest in people and things.
• The enthusiasm for life.
• Caring for others and for oneself.
• The family.
• Work as a means of livelihood.

All these points lead to the idea that the happy life is the good life. Without these elements it is very difficult to achieve happiness.since the Russellian vision depends on all these factors to be able to lead a moderate, good life that tends towards happiness.

References

• De Landázuri, MCO (2015). Life and happiness in the ethics of Epicurus. Salamanca philosophy notebooks, 42.
• Castelló, SF (Ed.). (1993). Nicomachean Ethics (Vol. 9). University of Valencia.
• Lejard, F., & Oroz, J. (1975). The theme of happiness in the dialogues of Saint Augustine. Augustinus20(77/78), 29-81.
• Figueroa, ANM (2022). The transition to happiness according to Aristotle, Epicurus, Epictetus, Sextus Empiricus, Saint Augustine of Hippo and Saint Thomas Aquinas: A decolonial analysis. Analectic8(51), 1-20.