We Need A Game Show With A Lightning Round Question: "Happiness or Pleasure? - Why?"

Some very good ideas from an article on fun:

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psychologist Mike Rucker makes the case that pursuit of fun experiences may be even more valuable than seeking the sometimes abstract goal of happiness.

"Happiness is a state of mind," Rucker writes. "But fun is something you can do. It doesn't require education, money or power. All it requires is intentionality. If happiness is a mirage, fun is your backyard oasis."

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"Happiness is really an evaluation," ... You are constantly asking yourself what is going right and what is going wrong. It can become a trap,..."

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Quote from Cassius

But my expectation would be that if we had more of the "point in issue" we would see that this is a very abstract debate being stated in very philosophical, rather than practical, terms.

I agree that for practical intents and purposes we can set the question aside. Epicurus inherited a debate and he definitely intends to situate himself within that debate using (roughly) the established terminology, but it seems to me that the most important thing to know is: 'we say pleasure is the goal.' That doesn't settle other important questions, like whether pursuing pleasure is far more about removing anxiety than walks on the beach at sunset, but it's pretty clear that pleasure is the goal.

For all their fussiness about making pleasure the goal, the anti-hedonists insisted that you weren't living well unless your life was a source of pleasure and that virtuous people have the best, most durable pleasure. For Aristotle, 'pleasure completes the activity,' and happiness is a life of excellent activity. They're all just a hop, skip, and jump from hedonism. Sometimes I think it just makes them uncomfortable to share a goal with animals.

I heard an interview with Rucker last week and bought the book, but I haven't started it yet.

FYI

The Fun Type Calculator: What's Your Type?

What type of activities do you enjoy? It depends on your fun type. Curious about what type you are? Try the Fun Type Calculator to find out.

michaelrucker.com

While the "Fun Calculator" is a little goofy, the author's website as a whole has some interesting content. I found this quote from his Start Here page interesting...

Quote from Mike Rucker

I realized trying to be “happy” only drew my attention to what was missing. Fixating on my lack of happiness made me label myself as unhappy, and I came to realize that maladaptive label was bleeding into my identity. This left me with the question: If deliberately chasing happiness leaves me miserable, what’s the alternative? Then, after years of research and trial and error, a second crucial insight clicked into place: We can’t always make ourselves happy, but we all possess the agency to find ways to be more joyful and have more fun.

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We can’t always make ourselves happy, but we all possess the agency to find ways to be more joyful and have more fun.

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Having fun is an action anyone can take here and now practically anywhere, anytime.

I realize I'm late to this thread but Dr. Rucker has me intrigued. I haven't read his book or delved too far into his work in the last hour but I like where he's going. I like that he says "We all possess the agency to find ways to be more joyful and have more fun." From my perspective, we could easily rephrase that to "We all possess the agency to find ways to be more joyful and have more pleasure." I like that he uses "joy" which is, in fact, one of the kinetic pleasures (εὐφροσύνη euphrosyne) AND he talks about our having agency to bring about that particular kind of pleasure. Hmm... yep, I'm intrigued.

I've also read back over the thread, and there are some interesting takes on the "happiness or pleasure" topic. For what it's worth, here are my two drachmas worth. Everything from here on should be read as if prefaced by "From my perspective..." Your results may vary:

• Pleasure (and pain) are biological sensations present in all life (including plants it seems after a fashion).
• As such, all life appears to pursue "pleasure" (brooaadly defined as those stimuli conducive to existence) and retreat from "pain" (again, brooaddly defined as those stimuli unfavorable to existence).
• As forms of life become more complex, pleasure begins to be experenced as a positive "emotional" response to both external and internal stimuli.
• Homeostasis within the body can be experienced as a pleasurable state in which to be.
• As forms of life become even more complex (i.e., brains get bigger and more complex) as in humans, memories can also elicit pleasure in additional to coming from external stimuli ... as in having fun.
• Eudaimonia - the slippery ancient Greek word translated haphazardly IMO often as "happiness" - results from a body in homeostasis - all the bodily functions working in a balanced way - and a mind free from anxiety. If Happiness is standing in for eudaimonia, to me it is a *description* of a pleasurable life overall.
• "Happiness" is different than saying "I'm happy about X" or "I'm feeling happy (now)" or "What a happy day." Being happy in the moment is different than happiness, the state of living a happy life overall. And I'm primarily getting this from using eudaimonia (which I prefer to translate as "well-being") as the stand-in for "happiness" in my mind.
• I must say I also like Dr. Rucker's statement that "Fixating on my lack of happiness made me label myself as unhappy."
• Personally, I think I like to think of living my life in eudaimonia/well-being by pursuing individual pleasures, both from internal and external stimuli (e.g., pleasant memories and engaging in fun activities, respectively) which I interpret myself as katastemic and kinetic pleasures. Yeah, I went there!
• So, it's not happiness/eudaimonia vs pleasure; or pleasure; and pleasure. Happiness/eudaimonia are two different things describing two different spheres. Pleasure describes a feeling experienced in the moment. I can *anticipate* future pleasure and even plan for it, and take pleasure in the anticipation now, but I can't *experience* future pleasure. I can only experience pleasure now.
• Happiness/eudaimonia is a description of how I perceive my life as a whole. "Are you happy?" almost needs more than those three words to make sense.
  
  • "Are you happy (now)?" basically means "Are you experiencing a pleasurable feeling right now.
  • "Are you happy (with your life)?" basically means "How would you assess the level of pleasure overall in your life?"
  • "Are you happy (with that sandwich)?" basically means "Are you experiencing pleasure in eating that sandwich?"
  • "Are you happy?" asked by your partner is completely different from the waiter in a restaurant pointing at your meal and asking "Are you happy (with that)?"
• Looked at it this way, "happy" is a mushy, ill-defined word that can take on any number of meanings in context. It's like the English word "love"... "I love you" to "I love ice cream." At least Greek had different words for different forms of "love."

That's probably enough rambling now. To answer the original question: Happiness or Pleasure? I'm not sure the question is answerable in any specific way since both words - to me - describe two different things. One or the other? It seems it's both to me because I want pleasures so my life tends toward happiness/eudaimonia.

This discussion reminds me of Brene Brown's new book Atlas of the Heart. I initially dismissed her as another Oprah acolyte, but in listening to a few podcasts and interviews, I became intrigued by this book. The website is at

Atlas Hub - Brené Brown

A portal to understanding the emotions and experiences that make us human.

brenebrown.com

But I've also attached the PDF you can download there that lists the 87 human emotions she discusses in the book. I've found it interesting to look through (in a cursory way not in depth) those 87 and trying to categorize each as pleasure or pain since as we know "the feelings are two."

She lists "happiness" but I'd be curious how she describes it. One reason being that I think she does a good job in providing insightful details for each and I don't think she'd be "sloppy" with a definition for happiness. I was especially intrigued by her distinctions between awe vs wonder and also overwhelm vs stress.

Full disclosure: I haven't read the book in full but skimmed parts and seen some of her HBO show.

PS. Okay, I downloaded the audiobook from my library but it's harder to take notes from that. Anyway, Brown contrasts joy vs happiness and quotes a theologian who gives the Greek for those two: makarios for joy, khairo for happiness (note: NOT eudaimonia!). Makarios μακάριος is the word Epicurus uses to describe the gods' happiness and is often translated as blessed. Khairo χαίρω is defined by LSJ as "to rejoice or take pleasure in a thing." Brown defines joy as a "sudden, unexpected, short lasting, high intensity emotion"; happiness is "stable, longer lasting, and normally the result of effort." I realize her decision to use joy and happiness to describe these feelings may be somewhat arbitrary, but I like her slicing and dicing the emotional spectrum. I also find it interesting to try to categorize each of the 87 like I said into pleasure or pain.

Quote from Don

Looked at it this way, "happy" is a mushy, ill-defined word that can take on any number of meanings in context. It's like the English word "love"... "I love you" to "I love ice cream." At least Greek had different words for different forms of "love."

One thing that I think can get lost in this discussion is that the same is true of eudaimonia to the average Ancient Greek non-philosopher, the 'man on the street.' Philosophers have never had a particularly intuitive account of happiness.

I find Don's list of different ways of taking the question of 'Are you happy?' super helpful.