Content area
Full text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
There are (at least) three distinct philosophical projects undertaken by Daniel Haybron in this book. First, he develops a theory of happiness (understood as a non-normative, purely psychological phenomenon). Second, he sketches a theory of well-being. And third, he considers the normative implications of contemporary psychological findings, which suggest that we human beings are extremely poor judges of our own good or at least poor judges of how to pursue it. All three are admirable projects, and Haybron has interesting things to say about all three. However, the most fully developed part of the book is his theory of happiness, and for this reason I will say the most about that.
Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 contain the discussion of happiness, with chapters 4 and 5 being largely critical and chapters 6 and 7 containing Haybron's own positive view. Even his arguments against other theories of happiness are instructive (though remember these are arguments against views in philosophical psychology, not against the similarly named theories of well-being). The problem with hedonism about happiness - which identifies happiness with a favorable balance of pleasure over pain - is the superficial nature of the affects the theory is built upon. Pleasures are most naturally understood as simple affective experiences with a distinctive positive feel. But many such experiences, such as the fleeting pleasures associated with eating a good meal, while nice enough, seem to have little or no impact on our more stable background feelings. Yet it seems more plausible to identify happiness (or unhappiness) with the more stable feelings. Second, happiness appears to play a role in our psychology that no mere pleasure could play. If we know a person is happy we know that she is in a state that is not easily disrupted which affects many other aspects of her psychology. Hence we can retrospectively explain some of her behavior as well as predict things about how she will behave or react in the near future.
Life satisfaction theories of happiness (not well-being) are examined and found lacking as well. Despite numerous subtle variations in its definition, life satisfaction is always either an attitude towards one's life or a state partly comprised of such an attitude. It...