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Course: Wireless Philosophy > Unit 9
Lesson 5: Is happiness just about getting what you want?Is happiness just about getting what you want?
In this wireless philosophy video, Tamar Gendler (Yale University) examines the claim that being happy is just about getting what you want.
View our happiness learning module and other videos in this series here:
https://www.wi-phi.com/modules/happy/. Created by Gaurav Vazirani.
Video transcript
[Music] Hi, I’m Dr. Tamar Gendler, Dean
of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and professor of philosophy, psychology,
and cognitive science at Yale University, and in this Wi-Phi video
I’ll examine the idea that being happy is just about
getting what you want. Maya and Sophie have been discussing
what philosophers think about happiness. Philosophical hedonists
say happiness is about having lots of positive feelings
and few negative ones. But Maya is not convinced
that feelings are all that matter. Having a partner makes her feel great. But if he were secretly cheating on her,
she wouldn't describe herself as happy -- even if she never found out. Her happiness about having
a partner requires more than the feeling of having a
faithful and loving partner -- it also requires actually
having a faithful and loving partner! Maya recalls a survey she took
to measure her happiness level, which defined happiness
as life satisfaction. If you’re satisfied with your life, you
don’t feel like you’re missing anything. You have everything -- or
nearly everything -- you desire. This reminds Sophie of another
philosophical concept of happiness, called the desire theory. It says happiness is all about
getting what you want out of life. According to this theory, the more your
desires are satisfied, the happier you are. Maya isn’t so sure. She thinks back to the
summer after college, when she finally
got to take that trip to Paris she’d dreamed
about since she was little. It turned out to be boring,
unpleasant, and disappointing. It didn’t make her happy at all. So how can getting what you
want be the key to happiness? Sophie agrees. You can get
something you want, and still be unhappy. But we need to be careful
about describing our desires. Yes, Maya got to go to Paris. But that’s just part of what she wanted. She wanted a trip to Paris she would
enjoy. She wanted to have fun in Paris. So she didn’t get what
she wanted after all. This starts to make more sense to Maya. Real happiness is getting
what I truly want in life. And one thing I truly
want is to enjoy life. And doesn’t everyone want to enjoy life? That’s why pleasure is such
an important part of happiness -- but only because we want to feel good. And because we want other things too,
pleasure isn’t all there is to happiness. Since people’s desires vary, happiness looks very different
from one person to another. And even though it may be a
little hard for Maya to imagine, there may be some people who are not
attached to the pursuit of pleasure at all. Hedonism says people like
that must be terribly unhappy. But, Maya thinks, who is she to judge? Maybe for someone like that, happiness is
just really different than it is for her. Sophie points out
that while this flexibility is appealing, it leads
to a difficult question. What happens when someone’s desires
are twisted, harmful, or self-destructive? What if they even desire their own death? Would they really be happier
if they got what they wanted? Maya thinks of her family friend John, who struggled for years with
a serious drinking problem. That was an awful time in John’s life. All he wanted to do was drink
-- the desire was overpowering. But if all John wanted to do
was drink, and that’s all he did, then according to the desire
theory, John must have been happy! That seems wrong. John always talks
about how unhappy he was back then! And his friends and
family emphatically agree. For someone gripped by addiction
or other self-destructive desires, getting what they want looks
like the opposite of happiness. Sitting at home drinking all day for
months on end is not a happy way to live -- even if booze is all you crave. So, Maya says, the desire theory
can’t be the whole story, either. Sophie reminds her to be careful
about describing people’s desires. It might seem like all John
wanted to do was drink all day. And maybe that was
his most powerful desire. But didn’t he desire other
things out of life as well? For example, surely he wanted to
feel alert and energetic in the morning, instead of sick, tired, and hungover. Perhaps he wanted to
make progress in his career, but his drinking kept getting in the way. Surely he wanted to feel
closer to his family and friends, and to have them be less
upset with him about his drinking. If John had significant desires he
couldn’t satisfy because of his drinking, then the desire theory
is clear: he was unhappy. John’s desires were in conflict. That seems like a surefire
recipe for unhappiness. If you want one thing, but you also want something else
that makes it impossible to get the first, you can’t satisfy both your desires. As long as satisfying one desire
makes it impossible to satisfy another, you’ll be perpetually dissatisfied. Maya’s head is starting to spin. She agrees that conflicting
desires are sources of unhappiness. But was John’s unhappiness just
about having conflicting desires? Through hard work, therapy,
and a lot of help from his friends, John’s desire to drink is
no longer overpowering. He can pursue his
other, healthier desires. But if his unhappiness was
just about being conflicted, couldn’t he have found happiness by
extinguishing his other desires instead? If he’d extinguished his
desires for health, success, and good relationships and
focused wholly on his drinking, John would have eliminated the
conflict among his desires, as well. But that wouldn’t have made
him any happier, would it? Instead, it would have
been a sign that he was giving up any hope for
happiness altogether. Living the life you want to live is
a crucial ingredient in happiness, even more so than pleasure
and the avoidance of pain. But Maya still feels like something’s
missing from this account of happiness. What do you think is the missing piece? [Music]