First, a clarification: as many scholars have noted, "happiness" is a misleading translation of the Greeek " eudaimonia ," and partly for the very reason that is at the heart of your question. The Greeks certainly had disputes over how precisely we should understand eudaimonia , but all would agree that it is the term to use in describing someone who has a good and enviable life (and by thuis, they did not mean good or enviable in a restricted moral sense, but in the very pragmatic sense that all of us would prefer, at least all other things equal). So eudaimonia will be the condition that is always, utterly, and flawlessly in our interest. Now, this makes what is wrong with a subjective conception of eudaimonia fairly obvious, but since you asked, I will quote myself (and my co-author, T. C. Brickhouse) here: "Giddy morons may suppose they pursue their interest by doing what only makes them giddier and more foolish, but sensible evaluation will conclude that such lives...

Before I try to give an answer to your question directly, I want to object to the claim that seems to be its basis. I do believe that recent psychological research about happiness supports at least some elements of what might be called "irrationalism." On the other hand, it seems to me that this same research always treats happiness as a purely subjective property, and I want to make clear that this subjectivist treatment of happiness is very much at odds with the objectivist presumption in most of the philosophical literature on happiness. To quote myself (the easiest author for me to remember!), "Giddy morons may suppose they pursue their interest by doing what only makes them giddier and more foolish, but sensible evaluation will conclude that such lives are nothing to envy. The addict's high, even secured by ba lifetime supply of intoxicants, is no model of surpassing success in the pursuit of self-interest" (T. C. Brickhouse and N. D. Smith, Socratic Moral Psychology , Cambridge:...

I think that what philosophers call "moral psychology" (the analysis of why people act as they do, where by "act" we mean behavior that is voluntary, rather than involuntary) would hold that the relevant factors here are a bit more complex. Some eating is, as you suggest, simply a matter of pursuing the pleasures of taste. But the whole notion of "comfort food," for example (which which I hope you are familiar) adds yet another factor--namely, that eating some foods provides us with a sense of comfort that is at least somewhat independent from the special pleasures of taste. Eating can also be habitual, and the very act of eating (even when we are not hungry or not enjoying the taste of what we are eating) can provide us with a sense of well-being. In brief, then, I think the explanation of why we pursue things even when they no longer give us pleasure will probably be very complex indeed, because our psychologies of desire are not as simple as just pleasure-seeking of a single, simple kind.

It is my understanding that depression is a medical problem--and one that can be effectively treated. My advice (not especially philosophical, admittedly) is to have a talk with your physician.

Most philosophers (including several you have no doubt heard of, such as Plato and Aristotle) who have thought that happiness was the appropriate goal of a good life have not understood the goal they had in mind as a purely subjective state, so I would encourage you and your friend to consider the possibility that it is not simply feeling happy that matters, but actually being a certain way. Consider the case of a drug addict who is provided a lifetime supply of his or her drug of choice. If you wish, imagine miraculously finding a way to ensure that the addict's life and physical health would in no way be threatened--his or her expected life span would not be shortened, nor would the lifelong addiction threaten the addict's physical health in any way. In short, the addict could go through life high as a kite with all other necessities provided with indemnity against any of the usual deliterious affects of drug-addiction. The case I am asking you to imagine is probably impossible...

The ancient Greeks are among those who are often said to claim that happiness is the "ultimate aim" of human life, but one reason scholars have insisted that this is misleading is indicated to some degree in the question here. The actual word in Greek that is usually translated as "happiness" is eudaimonia , and scholars now argue that we should understand this not as a subjective experience, but as an objective state of the person--scholars have suggested "well-being" or "human flourishing" as more accurate translations. In other words, for the Greeks, the ultimate aim is something more like being healthy than like feeling happy. Just as the experience of pain may sometimes be required for a healthy life, it may also be required for one to live a eudaim Ç n life, so we should not suppose that what these philosophers endorse is the opposite of pain, or the (mere) pursuit of pleasure or subjective satisfaction. Of course, one would expect that a human being living in a way we...

Your memory is accurate. Have a look at Book I of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics . Great reading for young and old!

You have given a number of examples, each of which probably deserves specific responses. But as a general reaction, I think your cases do show that there certainly can be pleasures taken from things that also arouse or contribute to sadness or melancholy. There may be any number of reasons for this, though I suspect that many of these reasons have to do with the ways in which we have evolved as a species. For example (and purely speculative at that!)--as a social beings, we often take pleasure from the experience of being put in a position to see or empathize with the way other people experience things. Seeing a sad film may induce a kind of empathic sadness in us...but even so, we may experience some pleasure at seeing things "through the eyes" of the characters in the film. According to a general approach to virtue theory, there is nothing wrong with "getting sad about sad things." What would be inappropriate, surely, would be to fail to get sad about sad things. On the other hand,...

It really depends upon what you mean by "happiness." If you mean the somewhat fleeting and temporary experience (like the "happy" in "happy hour"), I think a life aimed at happiness would turn out to be fairly meaningless and empty. But if by "happiness" you mean something like "flourishing as a human being" or "having a complete and full life" or something like this, then it does seem like a reasonable overall aim in life. Philosophers who think that this aim can be one's guiding aim in life (and the aim from which all value in a human life flows) are called "eudaimonists," from the ancient Greek word, eudaimonia . Most ancient Greek philosophers thought that eudaimonia (which is generally translated as "happiness") was and should be the guiding principle and the ultimate aim of human life. If you would like to see a fine example of how a serious ethical work takes this position, I would enthusiastically recommend Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics , especially when he lays out his...