A central difficulty of utilitarian ethics is that we need to measure happiness in order to make some calculation about maximising it – whether it be Bentham’s quantitative method (the hedonic calculus) or Mill’s qualitative approach (distinguishing higher and lower pleasures).

According to a new book by Professor Lewis Wolpert*, people actually become happier as they get older, perhaps confirming Aristotle’s view that we are happiest five minutes before we die. “From their mid forties,” writes Professor Wolpert, “people tend to become ever more cheerful and optimistic, perhaps reaching a maximum in their late seventies or even eighties”.

There are two components that may explain this. The first is judgement which improves with age – phronesis or practical wisdom (the Aristotelean term for it). This judgement includes a certain realism and self-knowledge which allows us to handle our emotions better as well as an improved skill at handling life’s problems.

The second is perspective – we look at things a different way as we get older. We become less overtly ambitious, less idealistic in our goals and so generally more contented. A recent Sunday Times article states that “as people sense their time is running out they become more choosey about what they do and hone their life and social networks to maximise the cheering elements and abolish those that induce misery”.

All this tends to support an Aristotelean view of happiness. Rather than begging the question how we measure pleasure, Aristotle relates happiness to the idea of our goals (telos) in life, and our ability to develop certain skills (arete, virtues or excellences). He asks what do we need to be and do in order to flourish (eudaimonia)? What sharpened skills or virtues do we need to acquire in order to grow and so fulfil our true potential? What gifts can we develop?

Of course, this is a relative idea – it will be different for different people and different eras of history, but generally it will tend to see relationships as the key – with family, friends and teachers, and view life as an adventure of organic growth rather than of feeling (pleasure) or a mental state (happiness).

But just as Aristotle has argued that a flourishing human life requires friendships and one can have genuine friendships only if  we genuinely value, love, respect, and care for our friends for their own sake, not merely for the benefits that they may bring to us, some have argued that a flourishing human life requires the moral capacities to value, love, respect, and care for the nonhuman natural world as an end in itself (see O’Neill 1992, O’Neill 1993, Barry 1999).

*You’re Looking Very Well

For the full Sunday Times article of 28.20.10 go to:

http://www.cardi.ie/news/stanfordstudyshowsgettingolderleadstoemotionalstabilityhappiness