Pursuit of Pleasure vs. Pursuit of Happiness

Pursuing pleasure is a lot of fun. 😊 Listening to music, reading novels, spending time with friends, romance, walking in the woods, playing with children, sports, hobbies, etc. Pursuing pleasure is what it’s all about, at least according to Aristippus (c. 435‒c.356 BCE) of Athens. He developed a whole school of philosophy called Hedonism, which held pleasure as the highest good—the “summum bonum.” Surely, that is the way to pursue happiness… or is it?

At about the same time, Aristotle (384‒322 BCE) had a different view. Aristotle wrote more about happiness than any other philosopher to that point, and possibly made more sense and was more profound than any philosopher since. The central purpose of Aristotle’s ethics was directed toward achieving happiness, which he called “eudaimonia.” For him, there was nothing wrong with pleasure, but it was not the highest good. Happiness was the top value—the summum bonum.

Wait a minute. Aren’t they pretty much the same thing? Aren’t pleasure and happiness directly coincident?

I’ve been learning that, while pleasure is wonderful and necessary for human life, it is not itself the route to happiness or eudaimonia. In fact, the pursuit of pleasure can be detrimental to one’s life and living. An obvious case is the person who fritters away his life partying, drinking, and pursuing superficial affairs rather than pursuing meaningful activities that lead to profound happiness.

Pleasure and happiness can be thought of as the difference between tactics and strategy. Pleasure is tactics—doing the short-term, the everyday pursuit of feeling good. And that’s good. Nothing wrong with that. I love it. We all love it.

But the pursuit of happiness is a strategic moral mission of our lives. It’s the fundamental, long-term, continuing stream of decisions and activities that a rational person pursues in the full and complete development of a fulfilling life. This was Aristotle’s view—that life had to be well-lived in all the important ways.

Pleasure and happiness are not opposed to one another. While putting lots of wonderful pleasures into our life and feeling them deeply, we can keep in mind the long-term, fundamental, strategic pursuits of happiness. A long-lasting, continuous state of pleasure contributes to happiness. For instance, when one begins a career, one may find it to be pleasurable. As the job becomes satisfying, fulfilling, and a continuous stream of pleasures, that does add to the happiness. (One’s work, a career, is a strategic decision and activity.)

I would like to blog about strategic happiness as I continue my study of happiness.

Carl B. Barney
January 26, 2023