Much of the current debate on happiness seems to revolve around what things go towards making a happy life. The issue becomes one of ranking the things that matter to us - meaningful relations, good health, education, job satisfaction, lots of money, the life of the mind - in order of importance, and trying to decide which institutions - the state, the market, the family - are in the best position to deliver them.
But perhaps another, more basic question gets passed over in all of this. Namely: should we think of life essentially in terms of happiness, and what exactly is this fascination with it?
Despite Nietzsche's claim that only the Englishman seeks happiness, the drive to feel good seems to be a universal preoccupation found in diverse societies over vast tracts of time. At its most basic, the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure may be hardwired into our nature, a mechanism that ensures our survival as a species.
At a more sophisticated level, for some people, happiness lies in the search for a "golden age": a time of plenty and abundance when we were not defined by what we lacked. Attempts at achieving happiness become variations on this theme of a return to lost purity, from the religious idea of "the garden", to the secular retreat, to rural idylls and even, perhaps, to our dependence on, and unity with, an authoritative figure in childhood. Could it not also be that our forward dreaming and the shape of our utopias is informed by the feeling that happiness lies in our origins: the first time, that first place?
In all these examples, happiness is another word for satiation, rest, bliss and perfection. The problem with the idea of happiness as some sort of overarching and guiding principle is that it is a projection of a very narrow view of what it is to be human. Are we really governed by this single factor, or might there be other things - respect, altruism, duty, compassion, love - that move us to act? That we attain some level of happiness in pursuing meaning, beauty and knowledge is not to say that the motivating factor is happiness; it is just to say that happiness accompanies such pursuits.
Of course, one of the main reasons that happiness has had such a long run, and why it is the current flavour of the month, is that there's a certain charm (and benefit) in reducing all moral issues to a clear-cut method of evaluation. By allowing us to assess different states of affairs, and the elements that go up to make a good life, on a single dimension that can easily be objectified, the idea of happiness provides us with a common currency, as it were.
Being hooked on happiness may at first glance look like the legacy of romanticism; in truth, though, it is more closely linked to capitalism. We define our fundamental rights in terms of our ability to pursue - not achieve - happiness. Indeed, shopping and consumerism depend for their hold over us on cultivating this sense of being unfulfilled. It is hard to think of the endless expansion of capitalism, or the whole notion of progress and development, without this permanent lack of satisfaction and contentment. Our modern, troubled happiness is the new salvation not because it promises a perfect state of bliss but because it offers a picture of perfection that is always just out of reach: a happiness that is unlimited and therefore unattainable.
We have a sneaking suspicion that behind the shining surfaces and smiling faces - a life singularly devoted to the pursuit of happiness - there is another, more real and authentic life. Anything can be endured but the succession of fine days, said Goethe, and at least a part of us cannot but help think that there's something shallow, trivial even, in all this sun-and-wheat-consciousness. A life of perfection and of happiness is really the life of the Eloi: a life of boredom and indifference. If we are no more than "constantly moving happiness machines", is it any wonder that in these complex times it is only children who find happiness in things they do not possess: a star, a tree, a flower?
