Philosophy of Happiness

Allen Jeffrey Gurfel

I argue that John Kekes has dressed up a trivial truththat a happy man can be
called happyin the garbs of philosophical insight. The idea of a singular second-order
want that must be satisfied as a precondition to the title of attitudinal happiness is
obviously mistaken. His theory, undressed, is essentially no novel theory at all, but rather
the introduction of a linguistic conventionlets call the man who is happy often enough
attitudinally happy, even when hes feeling neutral or miserableand a simple
restatement of hedonism. There is a kernel of wisdom in his view, however: not all wants
are created equal, or more precisely, not all things, relationships, and circumstances
contribute equally to a broadly happy life. It isnt the case that satisfaction with life
broadly must follow the satisfaction of explicitly stated first-order wants. Satisfaction has
other conditions and can come by surprise. Moreover, there are objective standards for a
good, happy life. At the same time, a vast diversity of lives can meet those standards, and
there are subjective elements essential to genuine life satisfaction. There is no stable,
determinate one-size-fits-all mold.
John Kekes proposes a conception of happiness that aims to account for the two
ways in which we often speak of happiness: as the subjective experience that
characterizes those fleeting episodes of joy we experience episodically, and as something
that can be said of a life more broadly, a life taken as a whole, what we might call a
good life. This latter is called attitudinal happiness, and we call a person attitudinally
happy if he has satisfied many of his most important first-order wantsthose desires that
are fulfilled by obtaining something or doing something. More precisely, it is he himself
who forms a life-plan, or hierarchy, of first-order wants and judges himself to be happy.

There is no external standard Kekes sets forth or acknowledges, no objective model for
happy lives. Interestingly, he holds that life-plans can be assessed rationally by others,
inconsistencies and challenges pointed out. The final word on whether an individual is
happy, however, seems to belong to the individual.
But what precisely is the relationship between episodic and attitudinal happiness?
Kekes admits that the connection between satisfying episodes and an attitude of
satisfaction in ones life is not simple. It seems possible and even common, for example,
that although one satisfies or is satisfying a central first-order want, nonetheless, one
seems not to be happy, or even to be unhappy. Yuris life-plan may include, as a
centerpiece, the first-order desire to be a Don Juan or, more concretely, to rack up sexual
conquests. He may be successful in this while remaining, or even becoming, unhappy. It
is not the case then that happiness consists merely in doing or having what one wants.
Clearly, in the case above, Yuri is aware that he is meeting with success in seducing
Mary, Esther, Rachel, Regina, and so on. Even while he continues to value conquest and
few other things, he is unhappy; he is satisfying his own professed second-order want, his
life-plan, and yet, he is unhappy.
Suppose George explicitly formulates a life-plan and that, above all else, he
desires to gain his fathers approval and to make it to Los Angeles and become an actor.
He packs his bags, hops in his car, and heads West. But life takes him elsewhere. His car
breaks down, he meets a girl, he stays a while. The young couple have a child and marry.
He finds work where he can, and life goes on, far from California and the silver screen.
His father disapproves of the girl and the shotgun wedding. Still, George calls himself
happy.

How can Kekes handle these challenges? With regard to Yuri, Kekes may claim
that Yuris plan was faulty. He prioritized a first-order satisfaction that is only capable of
very transitory satisfaction. But suppose its the status that comes with being a player that
Yuri is after, recognition from his frat brothers that hes a mans man. Perhaps, Kekes
may respond, Yuri has made an error in committing to this singular first-order want so
exclusively that his soul shrivels. With regard to George, Kekes may argue that
Georges life-plan underwent revision. Whereas it was important to him to impress his
father, now it is important to him to be a role model for his son or daughter; whereas it
was important for him to become an actor, now it is important to him to be a valued
member of his community.
At least two difficulties arise. First, with regard to George, he only ever explicitly
formulated a single life-plan. In the life he actually led, he stumbled into happiness. He
was swept up by life and found himself happyhe never consciously reprioritized. Many
of us never come up with a carefully considered second-order hierarchy in the first place.
Its certainly unintuitive to say that any teenager who has not formulated a life-plan
cannot be said to be happy, or that any college student who has no idea what to major in
or what to do with her life cannot be happy. Second, Kekes ends up with a theory that
says, essentially, one is happy when one has most of the things one desires and those
things make one happy. Its a sort of true-come-what-may theory: if I have a life-plan,
and I find myself successful in my plan but miserable in my experience, this does not
disconfirm Kekess theory; if I have a life-plan, and I find Ive failed in my plan but am
happy in my experience, this does not disconfirm Kekes theory. All complicating factors
can be written off by faulting my life-plan if Im unhappy, or by claiming, if Ive failed in

my plan but am happy nonetheless, that really I have a different life-plan than the only
one Ive ever claimed.
An additional challenge is obvious. I might find success in satisfying nearly all of
my broad first-order wants but still be distinctly unhappy. A single eventfor example,
the death of someone closecan destroy all my happiness permanently. It remains true
that Ive satisfied the vast majority of my goals, my first-order wants, yet Im miserable.
Kekes holds that each satisfied want is an episode contributing to the formation
of [an individuals] attitude to his life as a whole. But it is perfectly conceivable that a
satisfied want could fail to contribute to attitudinal happiness. For instance, we may
derive no episodic happiness from obtaining the thing we wanted or doing the action we
wanted to do. In fact, we may have known in advance that we wouldnt derive any
happiness from some action and did it solely out of obligation. Perhaps were just
depressed. Or the satisfied want may bring us episodic happiness in the present, but
become the source of unbearable regret in the future. Suppose I wanted to write a book. I
wrote it, published it, and everyone hated it. Its the Gigli of books.
Kekes can say that my plan was faulty, that an act done out of obligation isnt
really a first-order want in my life-plan, or that what I really wanted was to write a book
everyone loved (even though I always believed I merely wanted to complete a book). In
the case of a depressed person, he may say, the problem is that he has no wants. This
might be the case; it might not. As an example, take someone who undertakes a quest for
revenge. We can be sure that person has been seriously, deeply hurt; we can also be sure
he has a want, a goal, namely revenge. Will revenge bring episodic happiness? Its not
likely. But thats because this person wasnt suited to revenge-seeking Kekes may

reply. What does it here mean to be a person whos unsuited for revenge-taking? To be a
person who isnt made episodically happy by getting revenge?
Again, the theory seems true, come what may. Let us make this element of Kekes
picture explicit by rearticulating the theory and see where it leads.
What is episodic happiness? The satisfaction of a want to do or obtain something.
This definition, however, is ambiguous. After all, I may want to do or obtain something
but, upon doing or obtaining it, find that it brings me no enjoyment, as I presumably
expected it to. In a sense, the want was satisfiedI no longer have that want. At the same
time, I am not satisfied. It would be strange to call this an instance of happiness. So an
episode of happiness must be the satisfaction of a want such that the satisfaction of that
want causes a subjective experience of happiness in me.
To be attitudinally happy I must satisfy a certain proportion of my first-order
wants and that satisfaction must in each case result in episodic subjective happiness. In
other words, in order to be attitudinally happy I must have been, in the past, and expect to
be, in the future, actively, subjectively happy. What of the claim that it must be my most
important first-order wants that are satisfied? I may certainly be as mistaken about my
most important first-order wants as I might be about my less important ones. How would
we tell whether or not I was mistaken? Presumably, if I satisfy, in the sense of objectively
achieving, an important first-order want but derive no subjective happiness from it, I was
mistaken, and this satisfaction will not be an instance of episodic happiness, and will
not contribute to my attitudinal happiness.
It is clear, then, that attitudinal happiness tracks durations and intensities of
subjective, experienced happiness. What amount of happiness suffices for attitudinal

happiness is unclear. What it means for an individual to be attitudinally happy is that,

even if he isnt experiencing subjective happiness right this moment or at every moment,
hes experienced some such happiness and can reasonably expect to experience more. A
happy person is one whos experienced and expects to experience happiness. What can be
more obvious? And we can call that person happy (attitudinally happy) even if he isnt
presently happyeven if hes presently very unhappy. This isnt any sort of deep
philosophical claim. Its merely the introduction of a linguistic convention.
The notion of a life-plan or a singular second-order want is therefore an attempt to
dress up an obvious, trivial truth as a philosophical insight. I can be utterly mistaken
about the episodic happiness the satisfaction of my first-order wants will produce. I can
be happyin the broad, whole-life senseeven if I stumble into a life that brings me
episodic happiness, one that is completely not the ideal life I planned. Some of us have
life-plans; others dont. Individuals from both groups can be plausibly called happy in the
broad sense.
Kekes writes, A man is satisfied with his life if he wants it to go on without
radical changes; of he is not seriously frustrated; and if he has frequent experiences of
joy, pleasure, or contentment. A man who is satisfied in this way should be called
(attitudinally) happy. First, life-plans have nothing to do with this criteria. Second, this is
essentially just the claim that a man who is happy with his life and experiences happiness
should be called happy. Third, it isnt even entirely true, for the desire for radical change
is consistent with happiness. I may desire to no longer be a student, to live on my own, to
have a certain job, to travel often, to eat at restaurants, and so on while, at the same time,
being, in my present circumstances, happy. I may believe I would be more happy, or

more secure in my happiness, if I could satisfy those wants, but that does not mean I am
not happy now.
I wouldnt call a zebra white, overall. This is what the term attitudinal
happiness does. It calls an individual who is happy often enough, and perhaps in an
intense enough way, happy in general. What enough would be is unknown, but we can
say the more often he is happy and the more intensely, the happier he is. This, of course,
is hedonism plain and simple.
Divorced from ethical considerations, what does Kekes hedonism amount to? (1)
The claim that happiness is nothing but a subjective, affective state. (2) The suggestion
that we label certain individuals attitudinally happy. Which individuals? Those who
express satisfaction with their lives and who experience some undetermined amount of
positive affective states. Kekes claims that these positive affective states must be caused,
at least in part, by the satisfaction of certain explicit, highly-valued wants. But why? As
he has built attitudinal happiness on episodic happiness, it seems that the satisfaction of
highly-valued wants must produce a different order of episodic happiness than the
satisfaction of less-valued wants. A different order how? What are the candidates?
The satisfaction of highly-prioritized first-order wants may produce either more
intense happiness or longer-lasting happiness. There certainly are wishes we have that,
were they to be fulfilled, we would experience greater and longer-lasting happiness than
we would under some other circumstances were some other wishes fulfilled. But if this
contributes to broad happiness it is precisely because we are set up to derive deeper and
more abiding happiness from whatever it is in question and not because we explicitly
articulated these wishes as goals of ours ahead of time.

Let us consider George. If George found happiness with Samantha and not by
becoming an impressive actor it is because love, at least for George, is a source of stable
happiness. It is not because hed ever explicitly articulated a want for Samantha or even
for a spouse prior to discovering, in the moment, that he was already deriving happiness
from their relationship. If we say that this relationship is now a first-order want for
George, this is precisely because it brought him, unexpectedly, and continues to bring
him great happiness.
For any given person, there are things that will bring him happiness, depending on
what that unique person is like, whether or not he has ever explicitly acknowledged a
desire for those things. If those things are present in that persons life, he will have a
stable source of happiness to draw on even if he does not have all that he wants. He may
or may not correctly identify, ahead of time, what things will seriously contribute to his
judgment that his life is happy, good, satisfying.
If George is happy but suddenly develops a strong and persistent desire for
something he does not possess, he may experience a diminution of his present happiness.
This would be the case even if the satisfaction of his new desire would not bring him an
ounce of happiness. If our desire for something in the future is experienced as a genuine
lack of something in the present, our happiness in the present may fade. Whereas before
we may not have felt deprived in any area of our lives, now we experience the absence of
our new object of desire as a deprivation. George may become dissatisfied with the life
that up until now has made him broadly happy.
A satisfied man is not necessarily happy; hes merely not unhappy, not
dissatisfied. A man who is genuinely satisfied with his life is happy almost by definition.

But as Ive argued, life satisfaction is not guaranteed by and does not require the
fulfillment of any concisely acknowledged desires or wants. What is conducive of
genuine satisfaction?
(1) Freedom from the domination of certain negative affects, such as anxiety, fear,
sadness, obsession, self-loathing, shame, worthlessness, hopelessness, anger, regret, and
dread. (There are of course circumstances that arise, in an otherwise happy life, that
warrant certain negative affects, such as fear and anger. In those cases, these affects may
be consistent with an overall good life.) (2) Non-material sources of positive affective
states regularly experienced, such as creative endeavors and opportunities for selfexpression, relationships, meaningful work, performance, hobbies, and the enjoyment of
art, music, and literature. Positive affective states include gladness, cheerfulness,
curiosity, joviality, tranquility, serenity, flow, engagement, meaningfulness, amusement,
exaltation, awe, and contentment. (3) Values, cares, and concerns. (4) A stable
disposition suited to coping with the adversities of ones everyday life and to promoting
ones values, cares, and concerns. (5) The absence of persistent longing or acute desire
experienced as emptiness, lack, or deprivation in the present. (6) Agency. (7) Selfesteem/self-acceptance/self-knowledge. (8) Success or progress in ones projects. (9)
Self-sufficiency/financial security/success/independence. (10) Adherence to ones ethical
code. (11) Optimism about the future and/or pride in past achievements. (12) Emotional
stability, basic equanimity, or a typically open emotional stance. (13) Ability to play. (14)
Freedom from oppression, violence, and abuse. (15) Material securityi.e. bodily
integrity, safety, nutritive food, clean water, shelter, privacy. (16) Community. (17)
Family. (18) Wealth and luxuries. (19) Development of talents. (20) Education,

development of reason, intellectual pursuits. (21) Exploration, travel, access to new

experiences.
It seems that some substantial combination of these is necessary for
genuine human satisfaction. A given individual may give more weight to some
categories than to others. For example, a young graduate student might focus
more on political activismthe values, ethics, and community dimensionsand
less on play. A retiring businessman might focus more on achievements,
community, family, and wealth and less on self-expression and exploration. It
seems too that certain items above are critical while others are less so. A life
dominated by self-hatred, regret, and hopelessness cannot be called a happy life,
but is it possible that one who leads such a life expresses genuine satisfaction?
Obviously not, for regret implies a haunting dissatisfaction with regard to the
past experienced in the present, self-hatred implies the exact opposite of
affirmation of ones self, and hopelessness implies an explicit disbelief that
circumstances will ever be such that one can affirm them. Similarly, its difficult
to call a life devoid of positive affective states a happy life, but is it possible that
one who leads such a life expresses genuine satisfaction? One may devote her life
to a cause and work to advance that cause at a great cost to personal happiness, in
the sense of positive affective states. But in terms of satisfaction, if not happiness,
the value, ethics, care, and agency dimensions (and possibly others) can cause
her to strongly affirm her life. To be right with an overwhelming ethical call one
apprehends, with oneself even, is no small matter for one who is set up a certain
way.

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Can one misreport genuine satisfaction with life? Can one be mistaken in
her judgment of herself as genuinely satisfied? It seems possible. For example, if
an individual has formulated an explicit life-plan la Kekes and satisfied many of
his highly-prioritized first-order wants at great costs and with great effort, and
yet he finds himself out of possession of the happiness he had expected such
satisfaction to produce, he may suppress this knowledge, unwilling (though not
consciously) to admit his error. Or consider a recent example from the news. A
man who had been the director of a gay cure organization was revealed to be
gay himself. Since that time he has married a man. We might reasonably suspect
that he would have reported himself genuinely satisfied even though he was living
a lie, and it is perfectly conceivable that his report was no lie in a certain sense,
that his psychology contrived to erase the obvious falsity of this judgment from
his conscious awareness, that the cognitive dissonance he acknowledges he was
experiencing in retrospect was at the time repressed, rationalized, disavowed, or
projected elsewhere. If we say that he was mistaken in his judgment, that he was
wrong, what could motivate and justify such a claim? We can justify the claim by
pointing out that there is another life available to him, one that he himself, were
he to pursue it, would admit (as he has admitted) offered orders of magnitude
more satisfaction such that could rightly be called genuine, i.e., not built on and
not requiring self-deception and not featuring internalized, if suppressed, selfloathing, characterized instead by self-acceptance, the freedom and lightness of
being that comes with easy honesty, and the possibility of developing intimate
relationships.

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In summary, broad happiness and genuine satisfaction are both

compatible with many second-order wants, yet they do not require any explicit
formulation of a second-order want, of a life plan. An individual may be
genuinely satisfied without being predominantly happy, for happiness is not the
sole contributor to a good, affirmable life. Dimensions of morality and meaning
also contribute to broad life affirmation, and can compensate for shortages of
subjective, affective experience of standard happiness. Happy, satisfied lives are
compatible even with failure to reach or satisfy many of ones first-order goals or
wants, if such wants are formulated.
Finally, let us consider a problematic example, the stereotypical Wall
Street hotshot whose life is organized around the amoral accumulation of
material wealth and symbols of status, purchased sex, dating models, extreme
parties, luxury, drugs and frequent intoxication. It can be admitted that these
pleasures are fleeting. Few material possessions yield long-lived enjoyment, sex
lasts a short while, intoxication is temporary. But suppose the banker is capable
of filling his life with a steady stream of these pleasures. He reports that his life
rocks, he is satisfied, and even feels bad for the rest of us who lack access to all
these pleasures and luxuries. Should we take him at his word, or is there
something to our intuition that he is not genuinely satisfied, that his life is not a
happy one?
Kekes would have to call him happy since he satisfies his first-order wants
(which were likely explicitly articulated, for it is difficult to just stumble into the
life of a Wall Street banker), has no will to alter his life, and reports satisfaction.

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We can admit this much: if he is truly incapable of deriving happiness

from anything elsecaring friendships, literature, compliance with deeply felt
ethical obligations, creative self-expressionhe is perhaps as satisfied as it is
possible for him to be. Even so, we should pity him, for this happiness falls far
short of the happiness human beings are capable of experiencing. The excessive
enjoyment of luxuries and brute pleasures is a shallow happiness. Importantly,
this is not necessarily an objective value judgment. It is an objective structural
fact about the nature of such pleasures and the human psyche.
Consider the phenomenology of apprehending a mere material object. It
has a determinate size, weight, texture, color, and shape. Material objects as
mere material objects are incapable of contributing to our happinessa piece of
gum on the pavement, a mug, a cloud. If a material object contributes to our
happiness, it is only because it does something to or for us. You may find a
certain painting, a material object, exceptionally beautiful while I find it
downright hideous. You would hang it in your home not as a mere material object
but as an object of beauty, because it triggers in you a certain experience, such as
awe, comfort, serenity, hope, or some more vague and abstract aesthetic
enjoyment. I hold dear a certain teacup, but I hold it dear not as a mere circular,
concave, ceramic thing. I hold it dear because, when I bought it, the cup was one
of very few things that were solely my own and Id made a special occasion of
finding the right one. For years, I used it only to drink green tea, which I would
prepare and enjoy mindfully, reminding myself to appreciate small things in the
present. I treasure a small statue of two hounds on the hunt not as a shapely
chunk of marble but as a last gift from my grandmother, a reminder of her life
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and her influence on mine. These objects contribute to our happiness because
they touch us in deep ways. They are irreplaceable. Other material objects
contribute to our happiness because they are useful to us in certain ways. For
example, paint, brushes, and canvas are necessary for painting, for a creative
endeavor. If I derive deep joy from painting it is, strictly speaking, not the
brushes that contribute happiness. Rather, the brushes facilitate the activity
productive of happiness. A book may contribute to my happiness, but it does not
do so in virtue of being a rectangle with pages; it does so because of its contents.
Is there an essential difference when it comes to the acquisition of
excessive material wealth and status symbols? Yes, the objects of profligate
accumulation are meaningless. They do not facilitate, as instruments, activities
conducive of deep joy. They are not reminders of anything beyond purchasing
power. They are not irreplaceable. They do not move or touch their owners. They
can go missing without ones ever noticing, and should their absence be noticed
they can instantly be replaced. As a matter of time, one cannot use or enjoy each
of ten thousand objects. Status symbols are not acquired for their facilitation of
happiness-producing activities at all. They serve as declarations or reminders,
either to oneself or to others, of ones status, of ones high position relative to
others. To the extent that one values such items, these items betray certain
psychological facts about their owner. Specifically, they indicate that he craves a
vapid form of approval that does not even remotely touch on his being, and that
without such acknowledgment he is insecure and empty at his core. He depends
on an illusion, on the conflation of the worth of these items with his worth as a
person. Thus such a person is typically angered by others refusal to be impressed
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by his possessions and often must find others ways of asserting his dominant
status over them, for example, by mocking them as nobodies whose opinion
doesnt matter. If we ask him why he really needs a $60,000 Steinway S concert
grand in his foyer when he does not know how to play the instrument the
delusion may become apparent even to him. These status possessions are
pathetic cover-ups. They are matters of appearances and having, and not of
being, and are thus capable of producing only shallow enjoyment, if any at all.
One cannot derive abiding joy from an object one neither needs nor wants nor
cares about in itself.
Material objects involve a subject in a limited way. We can apprehend
them through our senses and use them in activities that we either have to dofor
example, a sponge for washing dishesor that we want to do because they
produce joy. But we encounter not only material objects in our world, but
immaterial objects as well, other persons. Whereas material objects are in a clear
sense immediately given, immediately present for use, other people are not. We
apprehend their material form but their depths remain mysterious. We are aware
that they, like us, possess will, ideas, beliefs, and agency. We are aware that other
people, unlike material objects, perceive us in return. Another individualthat is,
another mindinvolves a subject in a deep, total way. We create friendships,
relationships, and ties with other people, not with things. These relations provide
among the deepest, most valued, most spiritual, and central experiences of which
human beings are capable. Human relationships represent a radical break in our
isolation, in our captivity in our own minds. As such, the happiness derived from
relationships is deeper, more permeating and penetrating, than the happiness
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derived from the possession of material objects. If one does not form such
relationships, one is closed off from the possibility of such happiness. An inability
to form genuine human relationships may be irreparablei.e. one may be
constitutively unable to experience the subjective states involved in deep
friendship. Or the cause of such an inability may be found in an individuals
history. One may have shrunk from confrontation with the abyss of the other.
One may have a fear of exposing his own interiority, of letting others in. One
may have been betrayed or harmed, the pain of the betrayal running as deep as
the joy of friendshipa risk he in no longer willing to take. Regardless of the
cause, such an inability is a tragedy and we rightly view it as such.
The Wall Street hotshot of our example places a shallow demand on
others: be available as a tool for my enjoyment, affirm my status, do what I want
you to do. This is to treat other persons as material objects. It does not scratch
the surface of interpersonal relationships because the other person is not present
as a person but as a one-dimensional object. If we cannot perceive depth in
others, neither do we perceive it in ourselves. Self-knowledge becomes impossible
and genuine self-acceptance along with it. The self is experienced as shallow
along a single dimension of having, not being. Even the value of possessions
cannot be affirmed from within, and so one requires the admiration and
perpetual approval of others for the maintenance of a precarious egocentric
illusion.
Can the perpetual enjoyment of parties, extreme experiences, oysters,
exclusive gentlemens clubs, and the highs of substance abuse and sex make for
genuine satisfaction? Again, these enjoyments are shallow. If they are all the man
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is capable of, then perhaps we can say he is as satisfied as it is possible for him to
be. But we should pity him, for this satisfaction falls far short of what human
beings are capable of experiencing. Not all happiness is created equal.
In conclusion, we should reject Kekes views. His picture of first- and
second-order wants does not line up with lived experience or with our intuitions
regarding who may be called broadly happy. His view does not address the
complexity and diversity of human lives and experiences. He does not provide an
account of the qualitative dimensions of happiness or of how other factorssuch
as meaning and moralityfigure in life satisfaction. His term attitudinal
happiness might pick out certain actual individuals, but it will more often than
not pick out the wrong ones and leave aside the right ones. It is a trivial category.
His view is biased toward modern lives in capitalist societies, those lives that tend
to be rationally and instrumentally organized around checklists along largely
predetermined life-trajectories under stable conditions.
Instead we should acknowledge that people can be broadly happy without
a plan and thoroughly miserable with one. We should admit certain obvious facts
about human psychology and experience. We should judge a man broadly happy
by both subjective and objective standards, for there are objective conditions for
the deepest, most intense, most formative, and most abiding forms of happiness
we are capable of experiencing. These conditions include genuine interpersonal
relationships. In turn, genuine friendships require a capacity for care, empathy,
and moral feelingabsent these, a friend is no more than an instrument,
another amusement. Finally, we should remember that human experience is
complex and we are not all the same. Happiness does not exist on a meter stick or
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even on a simple spectrum. It exists on complex matrix. Some elements of

happiness are straightforward while others are nebulous, unquantifiable, and
inextricably tied up with deeper, less analyzable aspects of our selves.

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