Question Is every type of happiness or pleasure explainable (possible to articulate through reason or logic)? Should I be distraught that I am unable to articulate clearly some of my pleasures? And does an unexplainable pleasure (if it exists) suffer from its unexplainable nature or flourish because of it?

Accepted:
October 19, 2005

Comments

Your question has a number of facets. First of all, many theorists of emotions see them as complex rather than as simple entities, comprising at the very least a physiological dimension, a set of dispositions to behavior (including such things as facial expression and verbal behavior) and a phenomenology--a way that the emotion feels from the inside. Now it is pretty widely agreed that while the physiological and behavioral dimensions of any emotion can be described verbally, many would deny that we can put their phenomenology into words. After all, how would you explain how elation feels to someone who knows nothing of it, such as Mr. Spock? Yet if the "how it feels from the inside" dimension of it can't be articulated in words, then it seems that you're being hard on yourself in being distraught about being unable to articulate some of your pleasures. Likewise, if I can't articulate how one of my emotions feels, it is hard to see how that detracts in any way from the emotion--pleasure or otherwise. Another approach might just to be to appreciate the emotion for what it is and hope others can at least share the *source* of the emotion--whatever it is that is causing the pleasure in the first place.

Approaching your question a little differently, one might ask a further, pragmatic question, to wit: what difference does it make in your life (to your happiness, to your sense of well being, to your life projects) to experience pleasures/passions that remain inarticulate or not fully articulable? If the inability to symbolize a passion, or to capture it in a string of sentences causes you a measure of suffering, then it makes sense to attempt an articulation of it or to ask why that matters to you (therapists -- of the psychoanalytic persuasion, among others --make their money engaging in just this form of labor!) On this more pragmatic approach, the issue would be less whether one "ought" to be more clearly representing ones pleasures to oneself in order to experience them more completely (in some sense), as an embodiment of the maximally good life, but rather whether the existence of specific non-fully articulable pleasures/passions seemed to you (or to you in relationship) to be preventing you from leading a fulfilling life.