Meditation on Happiness and a Thought of J. S. Mill

Happiness is a mediocre concept. Why do I say such a thing? Aren’t I happy to be happy, and sad to be sad? Of course I am. But the important thing is whether my happiness, when I am happy, is worth anything; whether my sadness, when I am sad, is not a fault. Only the happiness of a truly good man matters, one who is happy doing precisely what love requires of him, living precisely as love would have him live. Which of us can say what should make us happy is not sometimes a burden, a duty. Which of us can say that we are not sad merely over the frustration of petty desires?  What does the happiness of a man like Trump matter? As J. S. Mill wrote: "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they know only their own side of the question.”

 

A profound concept. Aristotle argued that the point of all striving was eudaimonia, which has traditionally been translated (badly) as happiness. Thomas Jefferson made “the pursuit of happiness” – no longer Aristotle’s eudaimonia, but subjective happiness feelings and states of mind – a natural right. I’ve been reading about Kierkegaard’s crazy thought (in Philosophical Fragments) that God – a perfect being – could actually experience something like grief and unhappiness. He – from our perspective insanely – desired to be loved by his creature, man, a creature who did not know or understand him. Love cannot be commanded, although it is said to be the highest commandment to love God. We cannot love God in all God’s power and infinity – our being would simply be absorbed in worship and adoration by God’s infinitely higher being: the beatific vision. 

       Perhaps God doesn’t want our adoration and worship; he wants our love. He wants us to know him. To make it possible for us to love God, God had to descend, to enter time and flesh, to become one of us. God suffered for his love. God didn’t enter into our existence to make himself happy. From God, we learn that the point of all striving is not happiness – especially not the trivial sense of subjective happy-feeling (though I have nothing against that in general). The point of all striving, our quest so to speak, is love. I confess: this is crazy. And yet if I think a universe without a loving God, well, would I choose to be born into such a universe? 

   Yes, there is the Good. You feel it when some absolute limit confronts you: impossible for me to do that! Or not to do it! I see a gang beating up on someone weaker. As fat and old as I am now, I would have to intervene no matter what; I could not live with myself otherwise. Or the spontaneous joy over the birth of my child. Or the awe and wonder of really beholding and contemplating the starry sky. Etc. God or no God, I would say yes to a universe like that. But to hold such things to be real, I think they must have a source, cannot just be part of the furniture of the universe like atoms and molecules. These experiences force the concept of God as love on me, not that I really understand what that means. In any case, such experiences make or break one's attitude toward life, give life or death to the soul. They - or their absence - goes so much deeper than happiness - i.e. the state of mind that accompanies the fulfillment of my desires. Kili is happy when he gets the new toy he wanted. 

         Indeed, “God is love.” Love is the union of two distinct lives, transcending the distinct individuality of the lovers without destroying it, completing it rather. In the case of God and man, two radically unequal lives. Love is what makes possible the most profound judgment: good, wonderful that you exist! Love makes us glad of our own existence, which makes the true love of our own souls possible. Even in human terms, this is true: who would rather not be unhappy (in Jefferson’s presumed sense) ‘in’ love with the ones you love than happy ‘outside’ of love and apart? What kind of a soul could be happy alienated, cut off from the love of God and other human beings? What is such happiness worth?

 

 Two truisms. In the end, all unhappiness is frustrated love. All sin is a failure of love.