Meaning, Love and Happiness

In this posting I want to examine the relationship between meaning, love and happiness. Most psychologists seem to believe that there is no relationship between meaning and happiness, see for instance Baumeister, Vohs, Aaker and Garbinsky (1). They often look for such a relationship by asking subjects to complete surveys about how happy they are and how meaningful they find their lives. The subjects are often free to use their own definitions of meaning and happiness. Psychologists usually find there is no relationship between the two. This lack of a relationship leads most psychologists to adopt the separation thesis which holds that meaning and happiness are unconnected. It seems to me that there is a negative relationship which questions this separation thesis. This negative relationship holds that having a life devoid of meaning and being unhappy are correlated.

Before examining this negative relationship we must be clear what concept of meaning we are using. Firstly meaning can be defined in an objective way. This objective sense of meaning holds that certain things on a list give someone’s life meaning. For instance someone’s life might be said to have meaning if he does useful things, has loving relationships and is optimistic. Secondly meaning can be defined in a subjective way. For someone’s life to be meaning is roughly for him to find it meaningful, for her to judge it as meaningful. In what follows I will only be concerned with meaning defined in a subjective way. Whilst I will not pursue the matter further here I believe someone whose life contains certain items from an objective list is more likely to have a happy life than one whose life does not. However let us now consider someone who believes his life to be meaningless. Someone who simply lives from moment to moment. I have suggested in the past such a person would suffer fro the unbearable lightness of simply being, see my posting on riots and the unbearable sense of simply being . I would suggest such a person is a dissatisfied person and as a consequence is not a happy person. It is important to note that I am not suggesting here that satisfaction is linked to happiness, I will do so latter, but I am suggesting dissatisfaction is linked to unhappiness. It might be objected that whilst I have suggested that someone who lives from moment to moment is likely to be unhappy, I have provided no argument to support my suggestion. My objector might now suggest it is perfectly possible for someone to be a ‘happy go lucky person’ who pays no attention to either his past or future. In response I would follow Christine Korsgaard by arguing our nature as human beings means we have a psychic necessity to choose (2). I would further argue that we cannot choose if we don’t care about anything and that we cannot care about anything if we don’t have some sense of meaning in our lives. Someone who is happy go lucky chooses this lifestyle.

Let us accept that someone who has no subjective meaning in life is likely to be a dissatisfied and unhappy person. It follows there is a correlation between meaning and unhappiness. This correlation gives us a reason to at the very least question the separation thesis. Why then should Baumeister and his associates report no correlation between happiness and meaning? Antti Kauppinen argues that this correlation is dependent on the concept of happiness employed. On a purely hedonic account of happiness there is indeed no correlation but with a broader definition there is a correlation. For someone to be happy according to Haybron is,

“for one’s emotional condition to be broadly positive – involving stances of attunement, engagement and endorsement – with negative central affective states and mood propensities only to a minor extent.” (3)

Kauppinen offers a slightly different account of happiness which he calls ‘the affective condition account of happiness’. His account is a multidimensional account comprised of predominantly positive affect, mood, emotion, and hedonic quality together with an absence of negative affect, see Meaning and Happiness . Both of these accounts of happiness seem to allow some room for meaning. Let us assume that Haybron is correct in believing that being happy includes someone endorsing his positive emotional condition. Let us also accept that it is impossible to endorse anything without some sense of meaning. If nothing matters, nothing has meaning, then we have no basis on which to endorse it. It follows if we accept accounts of happiness such as those of Haybron and Kauppinen that the separation thesis is false.

Prior to examining the correlation between subjective meaning and non-hedonic accounts of happiness I want to examine further what is meant by subjective meaning. I defined someone’s life to have subjective meaning above as a life the liver of that life finds meaningful or judges it to be meaningful. I now want to differentiate between someone finding and judging a life as meaningful. Consider a glutton who claims that eating as much as he can gives his life meaning. I would not consider such a person as leading a subjectively meaningful life. A subjectively meaningful life is not one that someone judges or even thinks is meaningful. In the rest of this posting a subjectively meaningful life is one that someone finds or experiences as meaningful. To find something meaningful, is to find something as important, and if something is important it must be loved. In order for someone to have a subjectively meaningful life he must love something.

At this point I must make it clear what I mean by love. I do not simply mean romantic love, romantic love is type of love but does not define all types of love. In my postings I often make use of Harry Frankfurt’s concept of love as caring about and identifying with someone or something. This concept means someone who loves is vulnerable to losses if his beloved is harmed and benefits if his beloved flourishes. The lover is satisfied with his beloved and has no desire to change his beloved. He may of course be dissatisfied with his beloved’s condition. If his beloved is unhappy he will share this unhappiness. If his beloved is an institution in decline then this decline will distress him. According to Frankfurt the fact someone is in love, in this meaning of love, shapes his motivational structure and guides his conduct (4). It might be argued such a concept of love is too simplistic. Bennett Helm argues someone doesn’t love every thing he cares about (5). Does someone really love ice cream or is this just mere rhetoric? Helm argues we love the things we feel pride and shame about. Helm would agree with Frankfurt that we identify with the things we love. However according to Helm identification does not simply require a passive satisfaction but a more active feeling of pride and shame. Perhaps as I have argued elsewhere there are different forms of love, see the structure of love . Or perhaps there aren’t different forms of identification, only different degrees of identification. I would suggest even if there are different forms of love that underlying all forms must be basic form of ‘caring about’ in the way Frankfurt uses the term.

I have argued above that if we accept a concept of happiness such as those of Haybron and Kauppinen that the separation thesis is false. I will now suggest that if we accept Haybron’s concept which includes endorsement that we must also accept that it is a necessary condition for happiness that we love in some basic way. It is important to be clear what I am not suggesting here. I am not suggesting that basic loving is a sufficient condition for happiness. According to Haybron’s account of happiness for someone to be happy means his emotional condition is broadly positive, this means even if loving increases his positive emotional state this increase might be outweighed by other factors. Nor am I suggesting that being loved is necessary for happiness. I do however believe being loved usually increases someone’s happiness. However this is not true in all cases, for instance someone might be loved by another who is not his partner and this love may cause him unhappiness. I am simply suggesting that basic loving is a necessary prerequisite for someone to be actually happy. Once again it is important to note what I am not suggesting. I am not suggesting a disposition for basic loving is sufficient for happiness. A hostage held by terrorists may have a disposition to love, but be far from happy. I am simply suggesting that actual basic loving is necessary for happiness. A disposition for basic loving of course forms part of a disposition to be happy.

If it is accepted that the ability to love is a necessary element of happiness it might be thought that enhancing this element will increase our happiness. I have argued in ‘meaning and happiness’ that this is not so. It is not so because someone cannot simply decide to love someone or something. Love is not a matter of choice. Perhaps the best we can do is to situate ourselves in circumstances in which love might grow naturally.

1. Roy Baumeister, Kathleen Vohs, Jennifer Aaker & Emily Garbinsky, 2013, Some key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life, The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2013, volume 8(6)
2. Christine Korsgaard, 2009, Self-Constitution, Oxford University Press, section 1.1.1.
3. Daniel Haybron, 2008, The Pursuit of Unhappiness, Oxford, page 147.
4. Bennett Helm, 2010, Love, Friendship & the Self, Oxford.
5. Frankfurt, 1999, Necessity, Volition, and Love. Cambridge University Press. Page 129.