Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile

Christian Century, Dec 26, 2006 by Ellen Charry

Nicholas White's history of happiness is both interesting and curious--and a little depressing. Rather than presenting a straightforward history, White moves back and forth among significant voices in the philosophical conversation on happiness, from the ancient Greeks to social-scientific researchers who measure preferences. The result is informative but disappointing. Instead of arguing for a consistent position, White concludes that the attempt to conceptualize happiness is doomed and that it has taken us 2,500 years to realize that the topic is simply too much for us.

Though White's story lacks McMahon's interesting historical details and though the two tellings have different orientations, they are similar enough that it is appropriate to read them together. White wants to know if we can determine whether people are happy by applying some uniform standard to everyone; he concludes that we cannot. He clearly recognizes the conceptual defeat of quantitative hedonism, but his discussion remains on the theoretical level, so we do not get to see the remaining alternatives duke it out, although Kant's aporia about grasping happiness conceptually clearly wins. McMahon tells us, on the other hand, that Kant, backed by the 17th-century Anglican divines, radically changed the happiness playing field, and that the new rules suggest that we can never recover.

But is an overarching method for sniffing out each one's happiness on an independent scale what we really want? Do we not want spiritual guidance instead? We don't want to talk about how to measure happiness; we want to be happy. We want to know what is worth organizing our efforts around so we can steer our life in that direction and enjoy doing so. White's construction of the problem--as a philosophical quest for a definitive frame for assessing happiness--seems off the mark unless we are social scientists or market analysts looking for the perfect questionnaire.

Finally, M. Andrew Holowchak discusses happiness in Greek ethical thought. He teaches philosophy at Kutztown University, and it is easy to see this book as a text for an undergraduate course. A readable introduction to central issues in classical thought, it focuses primarily on Plato and Aristotle, but Epicurus, the skeptics and the stoics are also well represented. Holowchak puts the ancients in conversation with modern philosophers, who pick up or reject threads of the rich ancient dialogue. Reading this volume is excellent preparation for working with more difficult texts, like Julia Annas's The Morality of Happiness (Oxford University Press, 1993).

Unlike McMahon and White, Holowchak steps out of the role of impartial narrator to make his own suggestion for how themes in ancient Greek ethics can be relevant today. After presenting four classic treatments of happiness (with helpful diagrams and charts to explain the ancients), he takes up the powerful Delphic inscription "Know yourself" as appropriate for us too. Self-knowledge as personality integration follows Plato's two-tiered path to justice--that is, harmony--first in the soul and then in the polis. Holowchak agrees that happiness is a matter of both psychic and social integration, but he needs to make explicit a third element that Plato and Aristotle took for granted: cosmological integration. Seeing all our actions in the largest perspective is training in a sense of responsibility that is truly virtuous.