Happiness Is Higher Than Pleasure

I think the identification of happiness with pleasure is cannot be made and those two are very different from each other; and the only distinction can be made is between pleasure and happiness. In this essay, firstly I will talk about how the identification of happiness and pleasure is impossible and how happiness and pleasure are different from each other. While I am talking about this, I will object Wayne Davis’ arguments on identification of occurrent happiness with pleasure and I will talk about Kekes’ arguments. Secondly I will talk about which actions can make you happy and which actions can make you take pleasure (desire, wish, satisfaction). I will take into account J. S. Mill’s arguments on higher and lower pleasures to explain this.

Firstly, I think any kind of happiness cannot be identified with pleasure. They are two separate things. Davis makes a distinction between occurrent and dispositional happiness. While occurrent happiness is episodic and short-lived; dispositional happiness is psychological and long-lived. Davis says occurrent happiness is the same thing with pleasure. So according to Davis, a human enjoying her meal is occurrently happy and also she gets pleasure from eating. To understand the difference between occurrent happiness and pleasure let us take an animal as an example. A pig enjoying its meal takes pleasure from eating, but is it occurrently happy? According to Davis the answer is yes, the pig is occurrently happy while eating. But I think the answer is no. Happiness is something beyond the pleasure, wishes, desire and satisfactions. Happiness is a feeling both requires desires, wishes and satisfactions and something more than them. So while desires, wishes and satisfactions are dynamic feelings, happiness is not a dynamic feeling that can change so easily. Happiness depends on many factors such as combination of many desires, wishes and satisfactions. But desires, wishes and satisfactions depend on simple things, in other words instantaneous things. So let us turn back to pig for an example. It can eat, and it can take pleasure (desire, wish, satisfaction) from eating. A human can eat, and she can also take pleasure from eating. At the pleasure level, a pig and a human is not different from each other. But when it comes to the happiness level, it is the place where a pig and a human differentiate. A human can think of an intellectual memory of her eating a meal with her grandfather, and therefore be happy while eating, but a pig cannot do that intellectual thinking so it can only take pleasure but no happiness from eating. In short, people can taste both pleasure and happiness from different levels, but no animal can taste happiness.  Kekes says pleasure (desire, wishes, and satisfactions) is necessary but not efficient for happiness. This sentence is a good summary for the distinction of occurrent happiness and pleasure. The sentence highlights the depth of happiness, and inadequacy of pleasure in achieving happiness. If pleasure is not enough for happiness, then pleasure and happiness cannot be the same thing.

Secondly, I want to talk about the distinction between the actions that give pleasure and the actions that causes happiness. In the previous paragraph, I talked about how pleasure and happiness are two different things. If they are different, then the actions which cause happiness and pleasure must be different accordingly. John Stuart Mill says there are higher and lower pleasures. For me, there are only higher happinesses and lower pleasures. I think this distinction lies in the actions which differentiates being an animal and being a human. In the previous paragraph, I explained why an animal cannot be happy and why it can only feel pleasure. Since animals cannot feel happiness, then higher happinesses are exclusive to people (happiness level), and lower pleasures are for both humans and animals (pleasure level). So in this way, pleasure and happiness cannot be the same thing, but they can be two different things in two different levels. J.S. Mill says it is better to be a dissatisfied human than a satisfied pig. By this he means there is a distinction between pleasure and happiness, and happiness is the higher one.

In conclusion, I think the identification of happiness and pleasure is not possible, and therefore they are two different things. Also what makes us human is the difference between them since a pig cannot feel happiness but can feel pleasure. So happiness can only be achieved by going beyond our animalistic nature, which is deeper than pleasure.

Bibliography

Davis W. “Pleasure and Happiness” Philosophical Studies 39.3 (1981)

Kekes J. “Happiness’ Mind” 91.363 (1982)

Mill, John Stuart. "Utilitarianism." (1996): n. pag. Early Modern Texts. Web. 6 Mar. 2016. <http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/mill1863.pdf>.