Happiness Pluralism

null, Caroline West (University of Sydney)

Abstract: Attempts by philosophers to analyse the concept of happiness have traditionally been monistic, in the sense of seeking a single set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for its correct application. Sadly, there are counterexamples to every such account, leading some to question whether any good conceptual analysis of happiness is possible. My main aim is to develop an approach that does better. This approach understands happiness as a weighted cluster concept, whose application and use are guided by multiple distinct criteria—both psychological and normative. These criteria—which include many of the familiar candidates in the literature (e.g., pleasure, perceived desire-fulfillment, life-satisfaction…)—often go together, but can pull apart, generating tensions within the concept. Contra monism, happiness pluralism says that no one of these criteria, nor any single combination of them, is strictly necessary for happiness. Rather, to be happy is to satisfy enough of these criteria, in no specific combination. Different people are free (up to a point) to weight different criteria differently, so the nature of happiness may vary (somewhat) from person to person and context to context. This account improves on existing monist analyses in two key respects: 1) it agrees with—and explains—intuitions about cases, and 2) it is better suited to occupy the important practical normative role that the concept of happiness plays in guiding prudential decision-making, which is why we want a good theory of happiness in the first place.