Eric G. Wilson’s little volume, Against Happiness, is a good introduction to the subject,1 except I would argue it isn’t about happiness. Or if it is, it’s about a superficial and degenerate form of it. What is today called happiness would have in premodern times been referred to as a kind of joy–a form of psychological satisfaction or pleasure.2 In the first book of The Histories, Herodotus tells of Solon’s answer to Croesus upon being asked who the happiest man in the world is. Croesus, the famously wealthy king of Lydia, fancies himself the man. But Solon names three unknown men–Tellus, Cleobis, and Biton–all of whom are dead.3 The question of how the dead may be happier than the living–and Solon is not attributing their happiness to one enjoyed in an afterlife–is one which highlights the major difference between modern and premodern–especially ancient–views of happiness. To be sure, one cannot do justice to the subject in the form of a short essay, however accurate. It is thus my purpose here to confine myself only to the major differences in the concept of happiness between the understandings of the ancient world, and that of the contemporary modern world.
The primary difference between modern and premodern understandings of happiness is that modern understandings are individualistic and subjective. I have spoken before of the modern tendency to abstract the individual away from concrete settings and circumstances.4 Combine such an abstraction with an almost exclusively subjective viewpoint, and we can begin to see how happiness is situated within a modern context. Just as actions may only be understood on the basis of will–beliefs, intentions, desires–that is, mental-states, so too happiness comes to be understood almost exclusively as a mental-state. Thus, on the modern contemporary view, happiness is a kind of emotion. It is fleeting, episodic, momentary, transient, ephemeral. It is something you experience, a temporary good feeling. The criterion of happiness is internal to the agent, it is therefore subjective.5 To be described as a happy person is to be, for the most part, upbeat and positive, seeing the best side of things, prone to laughter and jest, smiley and easygoing. In short, to be pleased and contented. To feel happy is to be happy.
Now mental-states are intentional, they have the property of aboutness, they point to things beyond themselves.6 This is another way of saying that intentions and desires have objects, a state of affairs toward which they are directed. To be hungry is to experience a mental state that is directed toward satiety. After we eat, we are satisfied in the sense that we are no longer hungry. To be happy is an instance of being pleased or satisfied; happiness is a mental state characterized by satisfaction. Satisfaction about what? Anything that corresponds to the preferences of the individual. Thus, the implicit yet common understanding of happiness today is preference satisfaction. Each individual has his or her own set of unique preferences corresponding to a multiplicity of variables and circumstances, wants and desires. To have our preferences satisfied is to be happy.7 To lead a life through which our wants and desires (preferences) are realized, is to lead a happy life. The condition of “not knowing what one wants”, of ennui, is therefore a condition which, as long as it lasts, prevents one from being happy.8
What is interesting about the Lydian king Croesus and his assumption that he was the happiest man in the world, is that his understanding of happiness was out of step with the epoch in which he was living. He had attained great riches and renown, he had realized the desires of his heart, surely he was the happiest among men. His confusion and eventual anger at the answer of Solon is thereby made intelligible–a response which largely mirrors the modern mind’s perplexity at Solon’s answer. But what are we to make of Solon’s answer to Croesus, that Tellus, Cleobis, and Biton–all of whom are dead–are the happiest of men?
It is from Solon that the Greek adage “call no man happy until he is dead” comes down to us.9 In contradistinction to modern, premodern views of happiness are not subjective, but objective. By “objective” I mean that the standards by which a person is judged to be happy or unhappy are independent of the person himself. They may be based on a shared social milieu, or cultural norms, but they nonetheless exist independently of the subject in question. Thus, the criterion of happiness is external, and not internal. In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, Ankhises–the father of Aeneas10–makes a prayer to Aphrodite. He asks to become a man of distinction among the Trojans, with flourishing sons and daughters; to live long and prosperous, beholding the light of the sun, blessed amidst the people, reaching the threshold of old age.11 This prayer in many ways perfectly embodies the ancient view of happiness, which characterizes a state-of-life, rather than a state-of-mind. It is not that such things merely describe Ankhises’ preferences, and that getting them would provide satisfaction or happiness–it is that such things comprise an ideal of a life well-lived, of a good life. On this view, happiness and the life well-lived are one and the same thing; happiness is the characterization of the goodness of a given life that can be reckoned only at death. A happy life is therefore a good life completed.12
In light of this, the answer of Solon is made more intelligible. One cannot be said to be happy until one has died because as long as one is alive the narrative of their life is incomplete, we do not yet know the end of the story. It is telling that Croesus himself fell into disaster and ruin in later years. And though he would have been deemed happy by modern standards (while his fortune lasted), the reckoning of his life was not possible because it was not yet complete. The men mentioned by Solon–Tellus, Cleobis, and Biton–all led exemplary lives relative to the social, cultural, and political structures in which their lives were situated. Their lives were complete, and their lives were good; thus they may be said to be among the happiest of men.
Perhaps the best articulation and defense of this view can be found in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, where he argues that happiness is the telos–the end or purpose–of human life.13 But it is important to recognize that the Greek word translated as happiness–eudaimonia–is concerned with a state-of-life and not a state-of-mind. To be eudaimon is to lead a flourishing life as man or woman, what Boethius called “a state of life made perfect by the accumulation of all goods.”14 What, exactly, that entails will have to be the subject of future essays.
Premodern views of happiness are thus structured by goods existing independently of the individual–by norms relative to the social, cultural and political aspects of a given society. Modern views of happiness have no structure, or rather its structure is uniquely determined by individuals. Common sayings like “whatever floats your boat”, and “to each, his own” reflect this. What remains common between modern and premodern views of happiness is that it is a teleological concept, it acts as an end or goal to human life; giving it shape, point, and purpose. Or perhaps more accurately, the premodern conception of happiness as the telos of human life has not been shed with the rise of modernity. But the conception of happiness–and thus the content of the telos in question–has changed, as we have seen.
Notes:
1. I say this because Wilson is critical of happiness, and thereby illustrates it quite well. But the concept of happiness that he attacks is clearly modern, and particularly American. See Eric G. Wilson, Against Happiness.
2. For a comprehensive introduction to the history of the concept of happiness, see Darrin M. McMahon, Happiness: A History.
3. See Herodotus, The Histories, Book One, Chapters 30-32.
4. To be fair, this tendency is not entirely modern, though it is only in the modern era when it becomes hegemonic. There are forerunners of such abstractions to be found in both Stoic and Epicurean thought in ancient Greece. See Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics.
5. It is subjective in the sense that its criterion lies within the domain of individual preferences and evaluations. Happiness is also thought of as being entirely within one’s control, almost to the point of being a choice. Much of this thinking can be found in contemporary self-help literature, though not exclusively, as the same ideas can be found in ancient Stoicism.
6. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides an excellent introduction to this aspect of the philosophy of mind. See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-intentionality/.
7. The satisfaction of preferences occurs in many different ways. Sometimes it takes the form of a simple contentment with the circumstances of life, other times it may be more explicit, such as when a goal is accomplished. The modern tradition of Utilitarianism, especially that of Jeremy Bentham, equates happiness with pleasure, as does John Stuart Mill, though in a much more subtle and refined way. Sigmund Freud likewise equates happiness with pleasure. Arthur Schopenhauer views happiness, not as pleasure, but as the absence of pain. That these examples can be reduced to preference satisfaction I will, for now, merely assert. See J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism; Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents; and Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation.
8. The apparently modern problem of “discovering oneself”–answering the question, “Who am I?“— may also pose problems for those seeking happiness as preference satisfaction.
9. That this became a common understanding in ancient Greece can be attested to in that many Greek writers, especially Aristotle, make use of the saying, often referring to it as a common saying, and making no reference to Solon.
10. Aeneas, the mythic ancestor of the Romans. See Virgil, The Aeneid.
11. See the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, 103-106. I am here paraphrazing the prayer of Ankhises as every translation I have read is worded differently. The content of the prayer remains the same.
12. It is worth noting that this was largely seen as a matter of luck or fortune. This contrasts sharply with the modern idea of happiness being fully within one’s control.
13. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics.
14. Note that Boethius is not talking about goods in the sense of commodities. See Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy.