Happiness
(Fr. bonheur; Germ. Glück; Lat. felicitas; Gr. eutychia, eudaimonia).
The primary meaning of this term in all the leading European languages
seems to involve the notion of good fortune, good chance, good happening; but from a very
early date in the history of Greek philosophy the conception became the centre of keen
speculation and dispute. What is happiness? What are its constituents?
What are the causes and conditions of happiness? How, if at all, does it
differ from pleasure? What are its relations to man's intellect, to his will, to his
life as a whole? What is its position in a general theory of the universe?
These are questions which have much occupied the various schools of philosophy and,
indeed, have exercised men who would not be willingly accused of philosophizing. For
happiness is necessarily amongst the most profoundly interesting subjects for all of us.
With the Greeks interest in the problem was mainly ethical, the psychology of
happiness being ancillary; whereas for several modern schools of philosophy psychology is
deemed the key to many of the most important queries respecting this familiar yet
enigmatic conception.
Dismissing the view that happiness was a lot arbitrarily bestowed by capricious Fortune,
the more serious thinkers among the Greeks regarded it as a gift of the gods.
Further reflection led to the view that it was given as a reward for goodness of
life. Hence the acquisition of happiness depends on the working out of the good for
man in man's life. What then is the good? For Socrates it is eupraxia, which
receives closer definition at the hands of Plato, as such harmonious functioning of the
parts of man's soul as shall preserve the subordination of the lower to the higher, of the
non-rational to the rational. In this view happiness becomes for Plato less the
reward than the inevitable concomitant of such harmony. It is the property of the
whole soul; and the demand of any element of the soul for preferential treatment in the
matter of happiness Plato would thus look upon as unreasonable. In setting happiness
as the intrinsic result of a policy of "following nature", the Stoics and the
Cyrenaics were in verbal agreement with Plato, though diverging to opposite poles in their
answer to the psychological question as to the constituents of happiness.
"Follow Nature", for the Cyrenaics, meant: "Gratify the sensuous
faculties which are the voices of nature." For the Stoics it signified:
"Satisfy your reason which nature bids us to exalt by the entire suppression of our
sensuous appetites." Happiness is for these latter the consequence of the
virtuous life which issues in spiritual freedom and peace.
In Aristotle's ethical system, happiness, as expressed by eudaimonia, is the central idea.
He agrees with Plato in rejecting the exaggerated opposition set up between reason
and nature by the Sophists, and fundamental to both the Stoic and Epicurean schools.
For Aristotle, nature is human nature as a whole. This is both rational and
sensuous. His treatment of happiness is in closer contact with experience than that
of Plato. The good with which he concerns himself is that which it is possible for
man to reach in this life. This highest good is happiness. This must be the
true purpose of life; for we seek it in all our actions. But in what does it
consist? Not in mere passive enjoyment, for this is open to the brute, but in action
(energeia), of the kind that is proper to man in contrast with other animals. This
is intellectual action. Not all kinds of intellectual action, however, result in
happiness, but only virtuous action, that is, action which springs from virtue and is
according to its laws; for this alone is appropriate to the nature of man. The
highest happiness corresponds to the highest virtue; it is the best activity of the
highest faculty. Though happiness does not consist in pleasure, it does not exclude
pleasure. On the contrary, the highest form of pleasure is the outcome of virtuous
action. But for such happiness to be complete it should be continued during a life
of average length in at least moderately comfortable circumstances, and enriched by
intercourse with friends. Aristotle is distinctly human here. Virtues are
either ethical or dianoetic (intellectual). The latter pertain either to the
practical or to the speculative reason. This last is the highest faculty of all;
hence the highest virtue is a habit of the speculative reason. Consequently, for
Aristotle the highest happiness is to be found not in the ethical virtues of the active
life, but in the contemplative or philosophic life of speculation, in which the dianoetic
virtues of understanding, science, and wisdom are exercised. Theoria, or pure
speculation, is the highest activity of man, and that by which he is most like unto the
gods; for in this, too, the happiness of the gods consists. It is, in a sense, a
Divine life. Only the few, however, can attain to it; the great majority must be
content with the inferior happiness of the active life. Happiness (eudaimonia),
therefore with Aristotle, is not identical with pleasure (hedone), or even with the sum of
pleasures. It has been described as the kind of well-being that consists in
well-doing; and supreme happiness is thus the well-doing of the best faculty.
Pleasure is a concomitant or efflorescence of such an activity.
Here, then, is in brief Aristotle's ethical theory of eudemonism; and in its main features
it has been made the basis of the chief Christian scheme of moral philosophy.
Constituting happiness the end of human action, and not looking beyond the present
life, Aristotle's system, it has been maintained with some show of reason, approximates,
after all, in sundry important respects towards Utilitarianism or refined Hedonism.
This is not the place to determine precisely Aristotle's ethical position, but we
may point out that his conception of happiness (eudaimonia) is not identical with felicity
the maximum sum of pleasures which forms the supreme end of human conduct for modern
hedonistic schools. It is rather in his failure to perceive clearly the proper
object of man's highest faculty, on the one hand, and, on the other, his limitation of the
attainment of this proper end of man to a handful of philosophers, that the most serious
deficiency in this part of his doctrine lies. It is here that the leading Schoolmen,
enlightened by Christian Revelation and taking over some elements from Plato, come to
complete the Peripatetic theory. St. Thomas teaches that beatitudo, perfect
happiness, is the true supreme, subjective end of man, and is, therefore, open to all men,
but is not attainable in this life. It consists in the best exercise of the noblest
human faculty, the intellect, on the one object of infinite worth. It is, in fact,
the outcome of the immediate possession of God by intellectual contemplation. Scotus
and some other Scholastic writers accentuate the importance of the will in the process,
and insist on the love resulting from the contemplative activity of the intellect, as a
main factor; but it is allowed by all Catholic schools that both faculties play their part
in the operation which is to constitute at once man's highest perfection and supreme
felicity. "Our heart is ill at ease till it find rest in Thee" was the cry
of St. Augustine. "The possession of God is happiness essential."
"To know God is life everlasting." With all Christian writers true
happiness is to come not now, but hereafter. Then the bonum perfectum quod
totaliter quietat appetitum (the perfect good that completely satisfies desire) can
be immediately enjoyed without let or hindrance, and that enjoyment will not be a state of
inactive quiescence or Nirvana, but of intense, though free and peaceful, activity of the
soul.
The divorce of philosophy from theology since Descartes has, outside of Catholic schools
of thought, caused a marked disinclination to recognize the importance in ethical theory
of the future life with its rewards and punishments. Consequently, for those
philosophers who constitute happiness whether of the individual or of the community
the ethical end, the psychological analysis of the constituents of temporal felicity, has
become a main problem. In general, such writers identify happiness with pleasure,
though some lay considerable stress on the difference between higher and lower pleasures,
whilst others emphasize the importance of active, in opposition to passive, pleasures.
The poet Pope tells us, "Happiness lies in three words: Peace, Health,
Content". Reflection, however, suggests that these are rather the chief
negative condition, than the positive constituents of happiness. Paley, although
adopting a species of theological Utilitarianism in which the will of God is the rule of
morality, and the rewards and punishments of the future life the chief part of the motive
for moral conduct, yet has written a celebrated chapter on temporal happiness embodying a
considerable amount of shrewd, worldly common sense. He argues that happiness does
not consist in the pleasures of sense, whether the coarser, such as eating, or the more
refined, such as music, the drama, or sports, for these pall by repetition. Intense
delights disappoint and destroy relish for normal pleasures. Nor does happiness
consist in exemption from pain, labour, or business; nor in the possession of rank or
station, which do not exclude pain and discomfort. The most important point in the
conduct of life is, then, to select pleasures that will endure. Owing to diversity
of taste and individual aptitudes, there is necessarily much variety in the objects which
produce human happiness. Among the chief are, he argues, the exercise of family and
social affections, the activity of our faculties, mental and bodily, in pursuit of some
engaging end, that of the next life included, a prudent constitution of our habits and
good health, bodily and mental. His conclusion is that the conditions of human
happiness are "pretty equally distributed among the different orders of society, and
that vice has at all events no advantage over virtue even with respect to this world's
happiness". For Bentham, who is the most consistent among English Hedonists in
his treatment of this topic, happiness is the sum of pleasures. Its value is
measured by quantity: "Quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as
poetry." Rejecting all distinctions of higher or lower quality, he formulates
these tests of the worth of pleasure as an integral part of happiness: (1) its intensity,
(2) duration, (3) propinquity, (4) purity, or freedom from pain, (5) fecundity, (6) range.
J. Stuart Mill, whilst defining happiness as "pleasure and absence of
pain", and unhappiness as "pain and privation of pleasure", insists as a
most important point that "quality must he considered as well as quantity",
and some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and valuable than others on grounds other
than their pleasantness. "It is better", he urges, "to be a human
being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied." This is true; but it is an
inconsistent admission fatal to Mill's whole position as a Hedonist, and to the Hedonistic
conception of happiness.
The aid of the evolutionist hypothesis here as elsewhere was called to the support of the
Sensationist school of psychology and ethics. Pleasure must be life-giving, pain the
reverse. The survival of the pleasure fittest to survive will, according to Herbert
Spencer, lead to an ultimate well-being not of the individual, but of the social organism;
and the perfect health of the organism will be the concomitant of its perfect functioning,
that is, of its perfect virtue. Thus happiness is defined in terms of virtue, but of
a virtue which is a mere physical or physiological excellence. Spencer's critics,
however, have been keen to point out that the pleasure of an activity in man is not by any
means a safe criterion of its healthiness or conduciveness to enduring well-being.
In the writings of the German Rationalists from Kant onwards we meet echoes of the
ancient Stoicism. Usually there is too narrow a view of human nature, and at times
an effort to set aside the question of happiness as having no real bearing on ethical
problems. Kant is inclined to an over-ready acceptance of the Hedonistic
identification of happiness with sensuous pleasure, and for this reason he is opposed to
our working for our own happiness whilst he allows us to seek that of others. His
rigoristic exclusion of happiness from among the motives for moral action is
psychologically as well as ethically unsound, and although "Duty for duty's
sake" may be an elevating and ennobling hortatory formula, still the reflective
reason of man affirms unequivocally that unless virtue finally results in happiness, that
unless it be ultimately happier for the man who observes the moral law than for him who
violates it, human existence would be irrational at the very core, and life not worth
living. This latter, indeed, is the logical conclusion of Pessimism, which teaches
that misery altogether outweighs happiness in the universe as a whole. From this the
inevitable inference is that the supreme act of virtue would be the suicide of the entire
human race.
Reverting now to the teaching of St. Thomas and the Catholic Church respecting happiness,
we can better appreciate the superiority of that teaching. Man is complex in his
nature and activities, sentient and rational, cognitive and appetitive. There is for
him a well-being of the whole and a well-being of the parts; a relatively brief existence
here, an everlasting life hereafter. Beatitudo, perfect happiness, complete
well-being, is to be attained not in this life, but in the next. Primarily, it
consists in the activity of man's highest cognitive faculty, the intellect, in the
contemplation of God the infinitely Beautiful. But this immediately results in the
supreme delight of the will in the conscious possession of the Summum Bonum, God,
the infinitely good. This blissful activity of the highest spiritual faculties, as
the Catholic Faith teaches, will redound in some manner transcending our present
experience to the felicity of the lower powers. For man, as man, will enjoy that
perfect beatitude. Further, an integral part of that happiness will be the
consciousness that it is absolutely secure and everlasting, an existence perfect in the
tranquil and assured possession of all good Status omnium bonorum aggregatione
perfectus, as Boethius defines it. This state involves self-realization of the
highest order and perfection of the human being in the highest degree. It thus
combines whatever elements of truth are contained in the Hedonist and Rationalist
theories. It recognizes the possibility of a relative and incomplete happiness in
this life, and its value; but it insists on the importance of self-restraint, detachment,
and control of the particular faculties and appetencies for the attainment of this limited
happiness and, still more, in order to secure that eternal well-being be not sacrificed
for the sake of some transitory enjoyment.
(See also EPICUREANISM; ETHICS; GOOD; HEDONISM; LIFE; MAN; STOIC PHILOSOPHY; UTILITARIANISM; VIRTUE.)
JOSEPH RICKABY, Aquinas Ethicus, I (London, 1892);
IDEM, Moral Philosophy (New York and London, 1893); CRONIN,
The Science of Ethics (Dublin, 1909); JANET, Theory of Morals
(tr., Edinburgh, 1872); PALEY, Principles of Moral and Political
Philosophy (London, 1817); BENTHAM, Works, Pt. I, ed. BOWRING
(Edinburgh, 1838); MILL, Utilitarianism (New York and London,
1844); SPENCER, Data of Ethics (Edinburgh, 1879); SETH,
Ethical Principles (New York and London, 1904); LECKY, History
of European Morals, I (New York and London, 1894); PLATO, Philebus,
tr. JOWETT (Oxford, 1892); GRANT, Aristotle's
Nicomachean Ethics, I (4th ed., London, 1884); RASHDALL, Aristotle's
Theory of Conduct (London, 1904). There are several of the translations of the Nicomachean
Ethics; WILLIAMS (New York and London, 1879) and PETERS
(9th ed., London, 1904) are good. SIDGWICK, Methods of Ethics
(6th ed., New York and London, 1907); IDEM, History of Ethics,
(17th ed., New York and London, 1896); OLLÉ-LAPRUNE, Essai
sur la morale d'Aristote (Paris, 1891).
MICHAEL MAHER
Transcribed by Vivek Gilbert John Fernandez
Dedicated to all Catholics who find happiness in continuing the work which Our Lord began.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VII
Copyright © 1910 by Robert Appleton Company
Online Edition Copyright © 1999 by Kevin Knight
Nihil Obstat, June 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor
Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York