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THE VALUE OF UNHAPPINESS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 September 2016
Abstract
John Stuart Mill famously remarked that it is ‘better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied’.1 But is it necessarily better to be Socrates satisfied than Socrates dissatisfied?
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2016
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1 Mill, John Stuart, Utilitarianism and Other Writings (New York: Penguin Books, 1962), 260 Google Scholar.
2 I present a more detailed defense of the life satisfaction view of happiness in my The Nature and Value of Happiness (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2014)Google Scholar.
3 My argument is limited to states of unhappiness that are warranted by the conditions of one's life. Excluded are cases of unhappiness that have no connection with reality, such as psychiatric disorders including severe clinical depression, bipolar disorder and post-partum depression, which are generally attributed to chemical or hormonal imbalances.
4 See Layard, Richard, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (New York: The Penguin Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Danner, D., Snowden, D., and Friesen, W., ‘Positive Emotions in Early Life and Longevity: Findings from the Nun Study’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80 (2001): 804–813 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Diener, E. and Seligman, M., ‘Very Happy People’, Psychological Science 13 (2002): 81–84 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Fredrickson, and Joiner, T., ‘Positive Emotions Trigger Upward Spirals Toward Emotional Well-Being’, Psychological Science 13 (2002): 172–175 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
5 Kramer, Peter, Listening to Prozac (New York: Penguin Books, rev. ed. 1997)Google Scholar, xiii, 18, and 245.
6 Walker, Mark, ‘Happy-people-pills for all’, International Journal of Wellbeing 1(1): 128 Google Scholar.
7 Annas, Julia, The Morality of Happiness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 73 Google Scholar, 74.
8 Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Ross, David (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar, 1109b15–17, 1109a24–25.
9 Ibid., 1126a3–1126a9.
10 Kramer, Listening to Prozac, 260.
11 Jonah Lehrer, ‘Is There An Evolutionary Purpose to Feeling Really Sad?’ New York Times Magazine, 28 February 2010, page 42.
12 Andrews, P.W. and Thomson, J.A., ‘The Bright Side of Being Blue: Depression as an Adaptation for Analyzing Complex Problems’, Psychological Review 116.3 (2009): 620–654 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Andrews, P.W. and Thomson, J.A., ‘Depression's Evolutionary Roots’, Scientific American Mind 20 (2010): 56–61 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Andrews and Thomson, ‘The Bright Side of Being Blue’, 632.
14 Andrews and Thomson, ‘Depression's Evolutionary Roots’, 60.