Cameron and Happiness

This past week, David Cameron has told us that he wishes to measure happiness and so help people to achieve 'the good life'.  He says that measures of purely economic well-being are not enough and too simplistic.  Cameron appears to be shifting his concern from a pre-occupation with material prosperity of the kind that the modern Conservative Party has fetishized for the past thirty years to a more holisitic appreciation of the good life for humans.  In itself, this is to be applauded.

Cameron's announcement should strike chords with most people, even those (like myself) who greeted his remarks with a smidgin of cynicism.  It would have been more heartening to hear the Prime Minister speaking in such terms during a time of economic prosperity but, even today, most people still say that the really important components of a good life are good health, the love of others, a sense of purpose, interior and exterior freedom, and the like.

So, to be fair, Cameron might be on to something.  I hope, as he does his research, that he will look to Aristotle, who offers happiness (eudamonia) as the supreme good.  The Greek word does not have a precise English equivalent, and it is sometimes rendered as 'human flourishing'.  For Aristotle, this good life requires the exercise of the ethical virtues (arete) such as, for example, self-control (sophrosune), generosity (eleutheriotes), self-respect (megalopsychia), friendliness (philia), justice (dikaiosune), among others.  The possession and exercise of these virtues points to the excellence of a person's character.  However, Aristotle concedes that the exercise of good character, as well as the enjoyment of eudamonia, is vulnerable to events which lie beyond the control of the agent (tuche).  Such events can poison all the excellences , or virtues, of character, grinding a person down so that they come to accept a more mundane conception of life.  There is a very real sense, then, that the good life for humans is fragile, and vulnerable to events which are external to the agent.

David Cameron would do well to ponder this ancient wisdom, since the policies of this new coalition government would appear to be introducing all kinds of additional impediments to human flourishing.  It is certainly the case that some groups of people are going to be far more affected than others.  Those most adversely affected are in general those who benefitted least from the boom years.  It is no good identifying 'happiness' in such as way that it is something understood to lie somehow outside a social context.  The soon-to-take-effect of the latest hike in the regressive VAT to 20%, the removal or reduction of essential benefits to people in vulnerable situations and the effective closing-off of higher education to the poor along with the consequent frustration of their aspirations will all militate against true human flourishing for many thousands of people.

Aristotle's eudamonia, and Plato's Idea of the Good are both presented in terms of their being ultimately situated in intellectual or philosophical contemplation, suggesting that they are invulnerable to external events.  But Aristotle, especially, acknowledges that relational goods (such as some of the virtues listed above) lie in the common life lived with others.  This common life, Aristotle stresses repeatedly, has a necessary instrumental role in the development of the good character essential to a happy life.  We need to belong.  Social impediments can corrode good character and, in turn, diminish eudamonia.  Deprivation from what is generally regarded as normal conditions for living causes frustration and, ultimately, alienation from what we are as human beings.  Our prisons are full of people who cannot flourish.  Some of our poorest communities are not so very different in this regard.  Government policy which serves to exacerbate hopelesness, frustration and alienation militates against Cameron's new project.