Happiness has been commonly described as anything from the feeling of joy, flourishing, tranquillity, a state of attunement, a sense of accomplishment, to an endorsement of life – the feeling that life is positively good.
In a different sense happiness is as Kant tells us, something we should be worthy of, or as Aristotle points out, our proper purpose or end in life, or as J. S. Mill suggests, while happiness amounts to pleasure and freedom from pain, it ought to involve noble feelings characteristic of humans such as the pleasures of the intellect and of morality.
There is a third sense of happiness we will also be discussing in this course: a philosophically interesting, albeit puzzling, fact that our mind, or a particular state of mind, is not closed off from the world. We cannot plausibly call happiness the state of being plugged into a happy machine! There is something about the way the world is, but also about our sense of freedom, self-respect and integrity, which make us agree with Mill that it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
We will be engaging with many interesting questions that happiness raises, such as its subjective nature, our emotional perception and knowledge about the world, and our efforts and activities that can contribute to the good life. Along the way, we will be introduced to the familiar philosophical literature on happiness, classical as well as contemporary, this including the emotional state, the life satisfaction and value theories and will be critically reflecting on the reasons we have for being happy and how to be responsive to such reasons.