Concept

Happiness

Overview

Happiness is a complex and multifaceted mental state that encompasses a range of positive feelings, from contentment to intense joy. It is often associated with positive life experiences, such as achieving goals, spending time with loved ones, or engaging in enjoyable activities. However, happiness can also arise spontaneously, without any apparent external cause.

Happiness is closely linked to well-being and overall life satisfaction. Studies have shown that individuals who experience higher levels of happiness tend to have better physical and mental health, stronger social relationships, and greater resilience in the face of adversity.

The pursuit of happiness has been a central theme in philosophy and psychology for centuries. While there is no single, universally accepted definition of happiness, it is generally understood to be a state of mind characterized by positive emotions, a sense of purpose, and a feeling of fulfillment.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Happiness is discussed.

A friendly interest in persons is a form of affectionateness, but not the form which is grasping and possessive and seeking always an emphatic response. This latter form is very frequently a source of unhappiness. The kind that makes for happiness is the kind that likes to observe people and finds pleasure in their individual traits, that wishes to afford scope for the interests and pleasures of those with whom it…
Bertrand Russell, The conquest of happiness
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This opinion is not, in the smallest degree, a departure from the Happiness principle. The ingredients of happiness are very various, and each of them is desirable in itself, and not merely when considered as swelling an aggregate. The principle of utility does not mean that any given pleasure, as music, for instance, or any given exemption from pain, as for example health, are to be looked upon as means to a…
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
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If happiness is to be the same as the moral good, it must be after the right kind of happiness has been distinguished; namely, that which commends itself after adequate reflection. Our criticism of Bentham will be directed to showing that, so far as he conceives of happiness as simply a sum of pleasures alike in quality, but differing only in quantity, he cannot make this distinction.
John Dewey, Ethics
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Agreeing also with our definition is the common notion, that the happy man lives well and does well, for it has been stated by us to be pretty much a kind of living well and doing well. And further, the points required in Happiness are found in combination in our account of it.
Aristotle, The Nicomachean ethics of Aristotle
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If happiness and the chase for new happiness keep alive in any sense the will to live, no philosophy has perhaps more truth than the cynic's: for the beast's happiness, like that of the perfect cynic, is the visible proof of the truth of cynicism. The smallest pleasure, if it be only continuous and make one happy, is incomparably a greater happiness than the more intense pleasure that comes as an episode, a wild…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thoughts Out of Season, Part II
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Philosophers who discussed Happiness

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Well-being

Place in the tradition

Part of Agnosticism.

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