George Wrisley Why Happiness is Not the Proper End of a Human Life Americans (Westerners? Humans?) are obsessed with happiness. Americans (at least) tend to believe themselves entitled to it. The human love affair, its depths, varieties, and extent, are well chronicled in recent popular scholarly books such as Darrin M. McMahon’s Happiness: A History and Sissela Bok’s Exploring Happiness: From Aristotle to Brain Science, and V.J. McGill’s explicitly philosophical The Idea of Happiness. There are countless “guides” to happiness to be found in bookstores and online. However, aside from the occasional dissenter, it is never questioned whether happiness is the proper end of a human life.1 This paper is the first step in a project whose conclusion is that happiness is not the (only) proper end of a human life.2 The argument for this conclusion has the following form: P1: Happiness is not consistent with profound suffering. P2: Doing the right thing is consistent with profound suffering. P3: There are times when one ought to do the right thing rather than seek happiness or be happy. P4: If happiness is not consistent with profound suffering and doing the right thing is consistent with profound suffering, then one can do the right thing to the exclusion of one’s happiness. 1
Kant is the most notable by way of his separation of right action from happiness (as the satisfaction of
desire), since the source of right action is the categorical (not hypothetical) imperative. Nietzsche would be
another prominent dissenter, particularly since attacking the ideal of happiness and the avoidance of
suffering is a major theme of his. For example, he writes: “…the more happiness the more volcanic the soil
– only it would be ludicrous to say that with this happiness suffering itself is justified.” (1986 [1878], 591).
I take it the reason happiness does not justify suffering, despite their mutual dependence, is that human
greatness (whatever that may be), is the proper end of a human life, not happiness.
2
Speaking in terms of Derek Parfit’s theories of self-interest, I would argue in favor of an objective list
theory over hedonistic theories and desires-fulfillment theories. See Parfit 1984, 483ff., for a brief
discussion of these theories. I would advocate right action/justice and wisdom/understanding as the key
components on a list of what makes one’s life go best. Happiness would be an admittedly desirable
byproduct of those, but they wouldn’t be sufficient for happiness; in fact, right action/justice and
wisdom/understanding are quite consistent with profound suffering, I would argue.
P5: If there are times when one ought to do the right thing rather than seek happiness or be happy and if one can do the right thing to the exclusion of one’s happiness, then happiness is not the greatest good. P6: If happiness is not the greatest good, then happiness is not the proper end of a human life. Therefore, C: Happiness is not the proper end of a human life. Only P4 is in some sense obvious. So for the rest of this paper I will defend the other premises and make clear how the conclusion follows from P1-‐P6. P1-‐P3 will receive the most attention. P1:Happiness is not consistent with profound suffering. Whether happiness is consistent with profound suffering will depend on what is meant by “profound suffering” and by “happiness.” Let’s first consider profound suffering. To begin we should note that suffering ought not simply to be equated with physical pain, though they are often quite understandably connected. As Buddhism emphasizes, while pain often does give rise to suffering, it is possible to cultivate an outlook whereby pain does not result in suffering. The suffering comes primarily from one’s frustrated desire for the pain to end. For our purposes I will give the following working definition of profound suffering: prolonged anguish whose sources are, e.g., mental or physical illness that greatly undermines the quality of life of either oneself or another whom one holds dear. Examples would be severe, clinical depression, chronic nerve pain from late stage Lyme disease, and being the caregiver for a spouse with severe, clinical depression or a debilitating physical illness or disorder. 2 The harder question, of course, is: what is happiness? We can identify the following four general notions of happiness: Aristotelian eudaimonia, hedonism, contentment, and stoic happiness.3 These are not the only possible candidates, but I take it that they are representative of the main ones. What are each and which, if any, are consistent with profound suffering? Aristotelian Eudaimonia After identifying happiness (eudaimonia) as complete, self-‐sufficient, and the best good,4 Aristotle writes in the Nichomachean Ethics: …the human good proves to be activity of the soul in accord with virtue, and indeed with the best and mot complete virtue, if there are more virtues than one. Moreover, it must be in a complete life. For one swallow does not make a spring, nor does one day; nor, similarly, does one day or a short time make us blessed and happy.5 According to this picture, happiness is an activity over the course of one’s life, and not merely a pleasurable feeling. Nevertheless, for Aristotle, pleasure is still a part of the happy life and pain interferes with a happy life. Aristotle writes: Moreover, it is also agreed that pain is an evil, and is to be avoided; …one kind of pain is bad without qualification, and another is bad in a particular way, by impeding [activities]. But the contrary to what is to be avoided, insofar as it is bad and to be avoided, is a good; hence pleasure must be a good. 1153b1-‐5 3
I am ignoring a possible fifth kind of happiness, otherworldly happiness, characterized by a kind of
afterlife in a heaven or union with the godhead. I am ignoring it because it by definition does not concern
the question of whether happiness in this world is consistent with suffering in this world.
4
Aristotle [1999], 1097a35-1098b20
5
Aristotle [1999], 1098a17-20. And virtue is:
…a state that decides, consisting in a mean, the mean relative to us, which is defined by reference
to reason, that is to say, to the reason by reference to which the prudent person would define it. It
is a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency. Aristotle [1999], 1107a1-4.
3 Pain is to be avoided because it is either bad without qualification or it impedes activities. Since happiness is an activity, it is easy to see that pain could interfere with its being achieved. But further: That is why all think the happy life is pleasant and weave pleasure into happiness, quite reasonably. For no activity is complete if it is impeded, and happiness is something complete. That is why the happy person needs to have goods of the body and external goods added [to good activities], and needs fortune also, so that he will not be impeded in these ways. Some maintain, on the contrary, that we are happy when we are broken on the wheel, or fall into terrible misfortunes, provided we are good. Whether they mean to or not, these people are talking nonsense.6 Though a happy life consists of an activity of the soul in accord with virtue, Aristotle here both rejects the idea that virtue alone is sufficient for happiness and claims that pleasure, the contrary of pain, is necessary for happiness.7 This fits with what he writes earlier in the Nichomachean Ethics: Perhaps, indeed, one might conceive virtue more than honor to be the end of the political life. However, this also is apparently too incomplete [to be the good]. For it seems possible for someone to possess virtue but be asleep or inactive throughout his life, and, moreover, to suffer the worst evils and misfortunes. If this is the sort of life he leads, no one would count him happy, except to defend a philosopher’s paradox.8 It seems quite clear, then, that Aristotle’s picture of happiness as eudaimonia, which, as McGill emphasizes, is the most complete and elaborate, is not consistent with profound suffering.9 6
Aristotle [1999], 1153b15-20.
This is in contrast to Plato who, through Socrates, seems to endorse the idea that virtue is sufficient (if not
necessary and sufficient) for happiness. However, the sufficiency of virtue for happiness does not mean that
all virtuous agents experience the same sort of happiness. See McGill 1967, 36ff., for a good discussion of
this latter point and the contrast between Aristotle and Plato. See Brickhouse and Smith 1994, 103ff, for a
more detailed treatment of Socrates’ views on the relationship between virtue and happiness, and for a good
list of further reading. An important task for a longer version of this paper would be to address the
problems with Plato’s understanding of virtue being sufficient for happiness.
8
Aristotle [1999], 1095b32-1096a2.
9
McGill 1967, 4.
7
4 Hedonism Turning to hedonism, the view that pleasure of some form, whether psychological or physical, is the greatest good, we can distinguish between two main varieties, namely, egoistic and utilitarian. Since our concern is an individual’s happiness being consistent with profound suffering, it is the egoistic that is relevant at this point. The assumption being that happiness is the greatest good and therefore happiness is pleasure. Given egoistic hedonism, we can distinguish between two varieties, one that is concerned with pleasure in the short-‐term and one in the long-‐term, perhaps, over a whole life on average. As a short-‐term, egoistic hedonist, if my end is achieving pleasure now, and if profound suffering is incompatible with pleasure now, then happiness and suffering will be inconsistent. However, a complication arises if we distinguish between types of pleasure. For example, if I suffer profoundly from paraplegia now, which one can imagine giving rise to a kind of profound psychological suffering, I might still take a drug that gives me intense physical pleasure now. If that intense physical pleasure is happiness, then I am both suffering profoundly and happy at the same time, and the two are not inconsistent. A similar result is possible for the long-‐term, egoistic hedonist. That is, I could over the long-‐term have regular occurrences of pleasure that average out to a lifetime of pleasure all the while suffering profoundly along the way. This would be in contrast to a lifetime with pleasure and no profound suffering and a lifetime of little pleasure and long-‐term profound suffering. 5 The problem is that if one’s profound suffering is psychological and it is countered but not replaced by intense physical pleasure, the sources of such pleasure are typically not viable in the long-‐term, e.g., narcotics, and in the short-‐
term they can cloud one’s mental capacities in such a way that they would leave one in a kind of stupor not conducive to more sophisticated forms of pleasure. Alternatively, short-‐term, egoistic hedonism might be consistent with profound suffering when, e.g., the profound suffering is psychological and the pleasure physical, but this would be a very limited sort of happiness, again not practical long-‐
term, since profound suffering is by definition long-‐term. Still further, if the intense physical pleasure replaces the profound suffering, whether psychological or physical, then one feels pleasure (happiness) and is not suffering profoundly, and as such, their being consistent would not be an issue. These reasons are not decisive in proving the inconsistency of egoistic hedonism and profound suffering, but they are very suggestive of the difficulties with making them consistent. So while happiness as egoistic pleasure and profound suffering are not strictly speaking inconsistent, they are not practical long-‐term companions, which, again, is problematic since profound suffering is a long-‐term affair. A further problem for hedonism concerns pleasure’s viability as an end, namely, the hedonistic paradox in which it seems that having pleasure as one’s end actually interferes with its acquisition. Higher pleasures, such as those that come from friendship, family, love, and contemplation, are the result of having the friendship, family, love, and contemplation as ends, not the pleasures they generate. 6 Contentment The version of happiness that I am calling contentment holds that it is not the process of satisfying one’s desires that is happiness but rather lacking further desires that need satisfying that is happiness. Initially, this would seem to leave open a wide spectrum of possible states of contentment. For example, one could be a billionaire, live in an opulent home without need to work, etc., and have no further desires that need satisfying. Or one could live in a mountain hut, gathering berries and nuts, and otherwise living off of donations, and not have any further desires that need satisfying. The problem, of course, is that the more desires one has that are already satisfied—the person of opulence—the less likely one’s contentment will last, as there are many more desires whose satisfaction needs to be maintained. One might cultivate an attitude of contentment such that whatever one’s state, one is satisfied. One can imagine a devote Buddhist striving for such a state of contentment. And this leads us directly to the issue of whether one could be content with a life of nothing but profound suffering. For if one could, then happiness and profound suffering are consistent. A major tenet of Buddhism is that craving (not merely desire) leads to various kinds of suffering. This is essentially due to the attachment to the object of craving and the craving itself going unfulfilled. So if you crave a tenure track job teaching philosophy but don’t get it, you suffer. If you are paraplegic and crave to walk, you suffer. If you have an intense burn on your leg and crave for it to stop hurting but it doesn’t, you suffer. Remove the attachment and craving, and you remove the suffering. Be content with your current state, and you remove the 7 suffering. The implication seems to be that attachment and frustrated craving, which is inevitable if you have attachments and cravings, are necessary conditions of suffering, and therefore suffering profoundly. If Buddhism is right about attachment and craving being necessary conditions for suffering, and thus for suffering profoundly, then contentment would actually be inconsistent with profound suffering, for if one suffered profoundly it would only be because one was not content. If one were content, one would not have attachment and craving that could frustrated. Stoic Happiness Following McGill, let us take Epictetus as our main source of a stoic idea of happiness. For Epictetus, happiness results from the fulfillment of one’s desires: “…happiness and tranquility are not attainable by man otherwise than by not failing to obtain what he desires, and not falling into that which he would avoid….”10 In order to be happy, then, we must cultivate a state of mind in which we only have those desires we can continually satisfy. How a person might minimize her desires is an important question, but not one we need to answer. For the stoic, suffering is only a problem if it is undesired. If one suffers, but the suffering is desired or not found undesirable, then one will be happy. But therein lies the problem: how does one make suffering desirable? A possible route around this problem would be the above Buddhist move of working toward a state of mind that removes attachment and craving. If one doesn’t crave the end of one’s pain, then one will not suffer. But if this is the way to save the stoic 10
Epictetus [1940], Book I, chapter 4.
8 idea of happiness, then it results in happiness and profound suffering being inconsistent, as we saw above. So either the stoic has the nearly impossible task of desiring profound suffering, in which case profound suffering and happiness are consistent, or in removing suffering by separating pain and suffering, in which case suffering and happiness are inconsistent. None of the four kinds of happiness are promising for a life that is characterized by both profound suffering and happiness. While not definitive, the above provides good reason for thinking that happiness and profound suffering are indeed inconsistent. P2: Doing the right thing is consistent with profound suffering. What doing the right thing consists in is obviously a difficult question. But as we have seen already, for Aristotle’s virtue ethics, one can be virtuous and suffer. Acting in accord with the categorical imperative and doing so for the sake of one’s duty is also clearly consistent with suffering. For Kant, doing the right thing means, among other things, not lying and not killing oneself.11 Telling the truth and going on living are both clearly consistent with suffering. Under the standard forms of utilitarianism, doing the right thing is a matter of maximizing pleasure or happiness for the greatest number. Doing that may very well leave one’s own happiness out of the calculation. If one is an ethical hedonist of the egoistic variety, then, as we saw earlier, one can do the right thing by doing that which gives one the most pleasure, e.g., by taking a drug, while still suffering psychologically. 11
As Kant illustrates, e.g., in Kant 1964 (1785), 422-23.
9 While the above are not all the possible ways of making sense of “doing the right thing,” they are the main contenders. Thus, we can with justification say that doing the right thing is consistent with profound suffering. P3: There are times when one ought to do the right thing rather than seek happiness or be happy. At this point, I have to appeal to our intuitions in a more direct way than before. Let us imagine examples in which doing the right results in profound suffering for oneself. The difficulty is finding examples where it is clear what the right thing to do is and clear that it will result in profound suffering for oneself. Here are several possible examples. A woman of modest means who has lost her husband (no life insurance) in a car accident, and whose son was left mentally and physically handicapped by the same accident, must choose between her own happiness (perhaps shipping her son off) and being the primary caregiver. A divorced son of modest means who must choose to take care of his widowed mother (with little money) who has early onset Alzheimer’s or ship her off to a home. A husband who must choose between divorce or being caregiver of his wife, whom he loves dearly, who previously suffered from mental illness, but now also has developed ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). All of these cases are complicated and perhaps would need more detail in order to say more definitively whether the person ought to choose happiness or forgo happiness to help the other person. But I want to suggest that if the details were filled in properly, we could have realistic cases in which the right thing to do would be to forgo one’s happiness in favor of helping the other. 10 P5: If there are times when one ought to do the right thing rather than seek happiness or be happy and if one can do the right thing to the exclusion of one’s happiness, then happiness is not the greatest good. If happiness were the greatest good, what we ought to seek above all else, then every action that has happiness as its aim would be the right action. But we have seen that there are times when right action is inconsistent with happiness. Therefore, happiness cannot be the greatest good. P6: If happiness is not the greatest good, then happiness is not the proper end of a human life. Whether or not life has one or more proper ends, if life had a single proper end, then that proper end would be the greatest good. Thus, if happiness were the proper end of a human life, then it would be the greatest good. Therefore, C: Happiness is not the proper end of a human life. Happiness cannot be the proper end of a human life, for, as we have seen, happiness is not the greatest good. Why? Because happiness is not consistent with profound suffering, but doing the right thing is consistent with profound suffering. And if happiness is not consistent with profound suffering and doing the right thing is consistent with profound suffering, then one can do the right thing to the exclusion of one’s happiness. Moreover, there are times when one ought to do the right thing rather than seek happiness or be happy. And if there are times when one ought to do the right thing rather than seek happiness or be happy and if one can do the right thing to the exclusion of one’s happiness, then happiness is not the greatest good. 11 Works Cited Aristotle [1999] Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. Terence Irwin. 2nd Edition. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.: Indianapolis/Cambridge. Bok, Sissela. (2010) Exploring Happiness: From Aristotle to Brain Science. Yale University Press: New Haven and London. Brickhouse, Thomas C. and Nicholas D. Smith (1984) Plato’s Socrates. Oxford University Press: New York and Oxford. Epictetus [1940] The Discourse, in The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers, ed. By W.J. Oaks. Random House: New York. Kant, Immanuel (1964 [1785]) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. H.J. Paton. Harper & Row: New York. McGill, V.J. (1967) The Idea of Happiness: Concepts in Western Thought Series. General Editor Mortimer J. Adler. The Institute for Philosophical Research. Frederick A. Praeger: New York. McMahon, Darrin M. (2006) Happiness: A History. Grove Press: New York. Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1986 [1878]) Human, All too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. Trans. R.J. Hollingdale. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Parfit, Derek. (1984) Reasons and Persons. Clarendon Press: Oxford. 12