An Ancient Question, a Modern Science
When we say that our life is “good,” what exactly are we saying? That we’re happy? That our life has been consequential in some way? Or maybe that we accomplished something we consider to be worthwhile? Consider someone who finds contentment in a quiet, familiar life, and another who spends a lifetime exploring, questioning, and beginning again. Which one lived better? And by what measure?
The words seem simple enough: “Life.” “Good.” Yet, much like the concept of time, the closer we examine them, the more difficult they become to define. Are we judging a collection of moments, a pattern of choices, or the entire arc of a human existence?
More than two thousand years ago, Aristotle focused deeply on this question in his Nicomachean Ethics. He began with a deceptively simple observation: everything we do has the objective, in some way, of something we consider to be “good.” Think about that for a moment. We work to earn money. We earn money to provide security. We seek security to make a certain kind of life possible. But what is life ultimately for?
If we follow this chain of reasoning far enough, we arrive at a fundamental distinction between two things that Aristotle called “di’ heteron” and “di’ auto” (or “δι’ ἕτερον” and “δι’ αὐτό” in Greek). Di’ heteron refers to things that are worth pursuing because they help us obtain something else. Di’ auto refers to things that are worth pursuing for their own sake.
Aristotle also believed that there was an ultimate di’ auto, a telos (τέλος): something desirable not because of what it might provide, but because it was good in itself. He called this ultimate telos “eudaimonia” (εὐδαιμονία), traditionally translated as “happiness.”
But is that what we’re ultimately seeking? Is happiness the final destination for where all our other pursuits are directed? Aristotle’s answer was more sophisticated than the word might suggest. He didn’t equate living well with simply feeling good. Sure, pleasure mattered, but so did virtue, practical wisdom, friendship, and the exercise of all our human capacities. A good life wasn’t merely something we experienced. It was something we participated in through the way that we lived.
Philosophers have debated these questions for centuries, and modern psychology has hardly settled them. What has changed, however, is our ability to investigate aspects of the good life scientifically: to define measurable constructs, observe patterns across populations, and test what contributes to human well-being.
Aristotle gave us a profound philosophical question. More than two millennia later, psychology has helped bring that question into the realm of empirical science. One particular psychologist, Martin Seligman, helped establish a scientific approach to happiness that is more broadly known as positive psychology. However, he came to question whether happiness was even the right word for what we’re seeking.
The Problem with Happiness
In his book Flourish, Seligman makes a rather surprising admission for one of the founders of positive psychology: he has come to detest “happiness.” Well, not happiness itself, mind you, but the word we’ve come to use to describe it.