I have to admit, I'm amazed and perplexed by all the emphasis on happiness these days. I've been reading Psychology Today for years, I've been following many of the wonderful blogs here on the topic, I've read many of the popular books and followed the academic reseach. Therapists want to help people find happiness, social scientists want to study happiness, and policymakers want to increase the total amount of happiness, but first we have to understand happiness—and philosophers still can't decide what it is, much less how one goes about achieving, finding, or creating it.
For instance, in her contribution to the new book, Law and Happiness
(edited by Eric Posner and Cass Sunstein), philosopher Martha Nussbaum takes a critical look at the happiness movement, primarily in the context of psychology and policy. She surveys three major thinkers on happiness: Jeremy Bentham, the father of utilitarianism, who considered all pleasures (and pains) to be comparable (according to his "felicific calculus") and equally good; John Stuart Mill, who elaborated on Bentham's utilitarianism by suggesting that there are higher and lower pleasures, the former being much more important to overall happiness; and Aristotle (who helped inspire Mill's deviation from Bentham), who considered happiness to be a state of flourishing or fulfullment (the Greek word is eudaimonia, which does not translate easily into English) which is reached through active engagement in a life of excellence.
Nussbaum criticizes economists, policymakers, and some psychologists for focusing on a simplistic, Benthamite, hedonic sense of happiness or pleasure, and credits others, like psychologist Martin Seligman (Authentic Happiness) for including a broader, more Aristotelian sense of happiness as fulfillment in their work. (In her book The How of Happiness
, Sonja Lyubomirsky conflates both conceptions of happiness, though a person can easily by very happy by one account and simultaneously unhappy by the other.) Throughout the essay, Nussbaum references Wordsworth's 1807 poem "Character of the Happy Warrior" (included as an appendix in the book) as an example of a person made happy, not by momentary pleasures, but by fulfillment stemming from meaning and purpose. (More on meaning below.)
Of course, Nussbaum emphasizes that simple happiness-as-pleasure is necessary as a matter of basic human welfare; while some people suffer by choice (for their art, to serve their country, and so forth), many suffer as a result of having few or no choices at all. In other words, one can only choose to suffer if one is in the position to make that choice, so people should have as many choices as possible, including as a motivation for public policy preferable to notions of Gross National Happiness. (For more on this aspect of Nussbaum's thought, known as the capabilities approach to well-being, developed with economist and philosopher Amartya Sen, see her book Women and Human Development
.) Also, there are many people who experience an absence of pleasure (much less fulfillment) due to clinical depression, and their lack of happiness needs to be dealt with in that context.
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Maybe it's just me, but happiness in the sense of fulfillment—not momentary, hedonic pleasure—is not something that can be consciously and deliberately sought, because the very process of seeking it will ensure that you will not find it. In this way, happiness is like love: how many people try so hard to find love, only to have love sneak up on them while they're not looking? I don't think it's a coincidence that for many people, love—not just romantic love, but also the love amongst family and friends—is an important part of true, deep happiness. Love, like happiness, is something that happens to you; you can't make it happen (though you can certainly make sure it doesn't). You can try hard to achieve success in your career, but it probably won't make you happy unless you regard that career as fulfilling.
As noted above, happiness-as-fulfillment is closely related to meaning, the subject of an earlier post here. Many people are deeply engaged in activities that give their lives meaning (like Wordsworth's happy warrior), but which cannot reasonably to said to bring them pleasure in any simple, hedonic sense. But such people would probably say that they are fulfilled, satisfied, or deeply happy, even if, to the outside observer, their lives are ones of sacrifice or suffering. These people are not concerned with being happy; they are living good, full lives that, through the living of them, make them happy, even if not joyful.
I think the Taoist concept of wei wu wei, which roughly means "effortless effort" or "action through inaction," applies very well here. This principle would imply that the best way to be truly, deeply happy is to stop trying to be happy, because trying to be happy will likely make you miserable (in part by focusing your attention on the fact that you're not happy!). Instead, focus on doing things that will bring happiness, whether through the results of the activity or, even better, through engaging in the activity itself. In other words, the "how of happiness" is to forget about how to achieve happiness; instead, just live your life, do good things, and be the best person you can be. Through these things, happiness will come—not necessarily constant feelings of bliss or joy, but even better, lasting, true, deep happiness-as-fulfillment.
You might be thinking, "sure, it's easy for you to disregard happiness studies—you're probably very happy already!" Sorry, no—I don't consider myself to be a happy person. Overall I am content with my life, but I rarely feel joy (more often the opposite). I just try to live the best life I can, and I never think to wonder or worry about if I'm happy. But like I say, maybe it's just me...
