Abstract
Happiness is often understood as mere emotions of joy, contentment and pleasure. An indication of this is the approach to happiness that one finds especially in disciplines such as positive psychology and happiness sciences in general. In analytical philosophy, happiness is most often defined as “a life of well-being or flourishing: a life that goes well for you” (Haybron 2011:2). This kind of happiness is then positioned against unhappiness as misfortune, tragedy, sadness and pain. Happiness is understood then as the exclusion or prevention of these “bad” experiences of unhappiness. Such binary or opposing thinking about happiness (as the opposite of unhappiness) ultimately presents us with the impossible and “unfortunate task of rejecting or avoiding unhappiness at all costs” (Verhoef 2022:13; my translation). However, this is the kind of happiness that is prioritised by the dominant voices about happiness in our contemporary culture, such as the happiness sciences, religion and consumerism.
The search for happiness (as the exclusion of unhappiness) ironically becomes something destructive for us as humans, but also for the world around us. If happiness is simply about our good experiences, positive emotions, pleasure and enjoyment, other people and nature become mere objects to be used and consumed, and even destroyed in the case of nature, to obtain this happiness. It is then simply about obtaining our own petty and impossible happiness as the absence of unhappiness. Along with this is the need to be in control of my life, of my destiny at all costs, and to exclude chance and all unforeseen events. To achieve this kind of happiness I must be in control myself and chance, and unhappiness must be avoided as far as possible. However, this kind of happiness remains a sad impossibility, as Schopenhauer for example rightly pointed out.
The question in response to this kind of exclusion of unhappiness as part of happiness is: How then should one think about unhappiness? Surely it can’t be disguised as part of happiness. How then can it be related to happiness?
The answer to this question ties in with the seemingly obvious and simple point I want to make with the article, namely that we are imposed to maintain the connection between happiness, unhappiness and chance. This connection is indispensable for happiness. Put another way: Viewing happiness as the absence of unhappiness and chance is extremely problematic, unsustainable and even destructive. However, the question is: How can one think more inclusively about happiness? This is what I focus on in this article, knowing that it is an alternative or upstream view within the dominant thinking about happiness in our contemporary culture.
To conceive of happiness, unhappiness and chance together as critically important to the possibility of happiness itself, it is first necessary to affirm life as a whole as valuable and worthwhile. The problem that arises when unhappiness is excluded as part of the understanding of happiness is that a large part of our life is overlooked with this kind of exclusive happiness. In other words, it reflects an attitude to life in which only the good of life is affirmed and recognised; only the summer and not the winter; only the sweet and not the sour. However, both joy and pain are part of life. To recognise and appreciate life as a whole therefore requires an existential belief in the value of life per se. It is from this point of departure that happiness can then be thought of more inclusively. However, it leaves one with the question of whether life as a whole is really worth it. Is life fundamentally something positive from something negative? Is it something we should and can affirm or rather something we should negate and regret?
In response to many traditions that negate life, the challenge is to affirm life as a whole, here and now, corporeal and temporal, as valuable. This affirmation lays the foundation or creates the possibility to be able to think inclusively about happiness. If one cannot affirm life in its totality as valuable, the pain and suffering of life is essentially elevated to the dominant or determining component of life, as one can see in philosophies and religions that negate life. The ultimate result then is that one only recognises unhappiness (as with Schopenhauer) and no longer happiness. On the other hand, strong philosophies that recognise and affirm the full value of life can lead to including even misfortune (pain and guidance) as part of the good of life. However, the latter position is not sustainable, because it can try to elevate the suffering in life into something good, or at least something that one just must accept. This often leads to a kind of passive Stoic ethical life, or one in which one just fanatically pursues one’s own happiness. However, a more nuanced affirmation of life in totality, as we find for example in the work of Paul Ricoeur, can offer a way out to understand happiness as more inclusive, without elevating misfortune to something good.
Ricoeur suggested that we should instead talk about happiness in optative language. The optative (from the Latin word optare, which means “to choose, wish”), is usually used to express a wish or hope: “May you ...!” In terms of happiness, the indicative describes or defines happiness, the imperative prescribes happiness, but the optative aims for something completely different: It wishes you happiness! It is a different way of talking about happiness – a more modest, hopeful, liberating, open way of speaking. It is the way of speaking and the kind of language one finds mostly in poetry and songs. Optative language can not only overcome the problems of the indicative and imperative, but can also bring together, praise and celebrate the contrasts that are often found within happiness. The optative therefore offers a totally different, more inclusive way of thinking, talking or singing about happiness, and Ricoeur points to an interesting example of this that one finds in the Beatitudes in Matthew 5.
Ricoeur indicates in this example that the tension between happiness and unhappiness must be preserved to understand happiness (again in the optative and not in the indicative). This is a necessary “dialectical tension” for Ricoeur, because it keeps the poles of happiness and unhappiness intact (they are not sublimated into a higher unity in the Hegelian sense), while the creative meaning possibilities of this relationship can be exploited. One pole or term is therefore not preferred over the other, but the interaction between the opposing terms is reimagined in a metaphorical and non-binary way. This dialectical relationship remains a fragile relationship and requires a different kind of language, such as the optative, to be able to keep it intact, and to be able to exploit its possible value. Ricoeur (1995:315) explains his understanding of dialectical tension as follows in his essay “Love and justice” in Figuring the sacred:
Here by dialectic, I mean, on the one hand, the acknowledgment of the initial disproportionality between two terms and, on the other hand, the search for practical mediations between them – mediations, let us quickly say, that are always fragile and provisional.
In Ricoeur’s example of the Beatitudes, it becomes clear that happiness is something that can happen. But to what extent should one strive for happiness and work for it? This tension between receiving (as chance, which just happens to you) and striving (as something you actively wish and work for) is for Ricoeur also one that must be preserved dialectically in our understanding of happiness. The pursuit of happiness must and cannot be given up. Alain (1973:242) says for example:
We must want to be happy, and work for it. If we remain in the position of an impartial observer, simply waiting for happiness and leaving the doors open so that it can come in, it is sadness that will enter.
For Ricoeur, it is once again in the optative language where the possibility lies to think together about these opposing notions of striving and receiving (chance). In the song (optative) about happiness lies the possibility of being able to conceive logical contradictions of striving-receiving together and explore their tension anew. The dialectical tension for which Ricoeur advocates between happiness and unhappiness is therefore also necessary when one reflects on chance’s relationship to the pursuit of happiness.
However, this dialectical tension of striving-receiving is always in relation to the dialectical tension of happiness-unhappiness, which must also be preserved. The inclusion of unhappiness in our thinking about happiness does not change unhappiness (pain and suffering) into happiness but brings with it a much deeper and more comprehensive understanding of happiness. It is also an indispensable relationship, because if happiness tries to exclude unhappiness, tries to overcome it, or tries to deny it, there is the possibility that we do not want or cannot recognise and possibly appreciate life in its totality. As soon as the striving-receiving tension is brought into relation with this, it again brings with it the ethical implication of still living and working for more happiness, but then with an awareness of the fragility of the fact that pain and suffering remain a reality, and that chance can still bring happiness. It is therefore two fragile dialectical tensions that must be preserved: the first between happiness and unhappiness, and the second between striving and receiving, to be able to celebrate, experience, seek, receive and share happiness itself.
Keywords: affirmation; chance; happiness; Paul Ricoeur; unhappiness
- This article’s featured image was created by moise_theodor and was obtained from Pixabay.