Tutorial 9, The Concept of Happiness
Tutorial 9, The Concept of Happiness
Tutorial 9, The Concept of Happiness
Module 2
Tasks for tutorial classes
Tutorial 9 (3 hours)
Theme: Mechanisms of structuring the conceptual content
I. Concept of Happiness
The word happiness is used in different meanings that are often mixed up. In
order to avoid such confusion, I would like to consider primary connotations and
choose one of these, which I will analyze in more detail.
When used in a broad sense, the word happiness is synonymous with “quality
of life” or “well-being”. In this meaning it denotes that life is good, but does not
specify what is good about life. The word is also used in more specific ways, and
these can be clarified with the help of the classification of qualities of life
presented below.
Table 1
Table 2
Passing Enduring
Part of life Pleasure Part-satisfaction
Life-as-a-whole Top-experience Life satisfaction
Pleasures
Part-satisfactions
Top-experience
Life-satisfaction
Overall happiness
Components of happiness
When evaluating their lives, people can use two more or less distinct sources of
information: their affects and their thoughts. We can “observe” that we feel fine
most of the time, and we can also “judge” that life seems to meet our (conscious)
demands. These appraisals do not necessarily coincide. We may feel fine
generally, but nevertheless be aware that we failed to realize our aspirations. Or we
may have surpassed our aspirations, but nevertheless feel miserable. The relative
weight in the overall evaluation is variable in principle; it is an empirical question
to what extend one component dominates the other.
Contentment
Unlike animals and little children most adults can also evaluate their life with
the use of reason and compare life-as-it-is with notions of how one wants-life-to
be. The degree to which an individual perceives his wants to be met is called
“contentment” and this concept equals the above mentioned “cognitive” definitions
of happiness.