Great IdeasLiving well
Happiness and the good life
What it means for a whole life to go well.
The question
What makes a whole life go well? Is happiness pleasure, goodness, or something else?
How the books answer
Oldest first. Each stop is our own short summary of what the author argued; follow the link to the rung for the whole lesson.
c. 430 BC
Herodotus, The History (the Persian Wars)
Herodotus tells how the wise Athenian Solon visited the rich king Croesus. Croesus expected to be called the happiest of men, but Solon named ordinary people who had lived and died well. Wait until the end of a life, Solon warns, before you call it happy.
“before he comes to his end it is well to hold back and not to call him yet happy but only fortunate.”
c. 340–322 BC
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle says everyone wants happiness, but people disagree about what it is: pleasure, honor or money. His answer is that happiness is a whole life of activity in keeping with virtue, with friends and enough good things around it. It is not a feeling that comes and goes but the shape of a life well lived.
c. AD 108 (taken down by his student Arrian)
Epictetus, The Discourses
Epictetus, a freed slave, teaches that happiness depends only on what is in our power: our own judgments and choices. Health, money and other people's opinions are not in our power, so a wise person does not stake happiness on them. The Stoics agree with Aristotle that virtue matters most, but they say virtue alone is enough.
“Of things some are in our power, and others are not.”
c. AD 397–400
Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions
Augustine looks back on years of chasing success and pleasure and says none of it gave him rest. He concludes that people are made for God and that only in God can the heart be at peace. Happiness, for him, is a gift found in loving the right things in the right order.
“Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.”
1265–1274
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, First Part of the Second Part
Aquinas works through the candidates one by one: wealth, honor, fame, power, bodily goods and pleasure. Each falls short of a complete good. He accepts much of Aristotle's picture of happiness in this life but argues that perfect happiness lies only in knowing God.
“It is impossible for man's happiness to consist in wealth.”
1861–1863
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism and Considerations on Representative Government
Mill holds that happiness is the goal of right action, and by happiness he means pleasure and freedom from pain. He answers the critics who call this a philosophy fit for pigs: some pleasures, such as those of the mind and of kindness, are higher than others. Those who have known both kinds, he says, prefer the higher.
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
Go to the rung: Mill: Utilitarianism and Representative Government
1865–1869
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
Tolstoy's characters look for happiness in glory, in society and in big ideas. Prince Andrei, lying wounded on a battlefield, suddenly sees the sky and feels how small his ambitions were. By the end of the novel, Pierre and others find a quieter happiness in family, work and simple days.
“How was it I did not see that lofty sky before?”
1897
Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya
Chekhov shows people on a country estate who feel their lives have been wasted. He offers no big answer. At the end, Sonya tells her uncle that they will keep working, bear what they must, and hope for rest, and the play leaves us to judge whether that is despair or a kind of courage.
“Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya.”
For young readers
What makes you happy? Maybe ice cream, a new game or a day at the beach. Those are good, but they don't last long. The great books ask a bigger question: what makes a whole life happy, from start to finish?
Many of the writers say it is less about getting things and more about being a good person, having good friends and doing work you care about. Think of a grandparent who has had a long, kind life with a loving family. Many people would call that a happy life, even if it had hard days in it.
Talk about it
- Solon said you can't call someone happy until their life is over. What do you think he meant?
- Is being happy the same as having fun?
- Epictetus says to care most about what is in your power. What things in your day are in your power, and what things aren't?
- Mill says some pleasures are higher than others. Do you agree? Which ones?
- Who is the happiest person you know? What makes their life go well?
Where else on the site
Every rung tagged with this idea:
These pages are our own short synthesis, written for families. They were inspired by Mortimer J. Adler's Syntopicon, the index of great ideas in volumes 1 and 2 of Great Books of the Western World, but the questions, summaries and groupings are ours, not the Syntopicon's. Short excerpts come from public-domain translations, credited where they appear.