Introduction
Modern philosophy asks the question of what happiness is, what underlies it, how to achieve it, and whether it exists at all. Modern philosopher Joel Feinberg declares that people are happy when they can fully engage and perceive various activities that they enjoy for the fact they are. Nonetheless, it happens when none of these activities inherently mean anything to a person. In this case, the individual who does not appreciate their activities and participates in them feels engaged and uses them to feel better mentally. Feinberg states that if one does not value their actions, one will never get pleasure. I cannot fully agree with this position since I believe that happiness arises from social interaction, not from assigning value to activities; my argument can be proved by reviewing the conclusions of various ages’ philosophers.
Main body
In the presented thesis, starting from an egocentric position, the problem is precisely selfishness, which is not fundamental to the rest of the concept. Religious, aesthetic, and other types of experience that bring peace, pleasure, and ultimately happiness demonstrate their effectiveness if they are associated with social processes. They denote the experience of working in a team, spiritual rites and communication within religious communities, or simple social interaction within the family. As a rule, close people with healthy relationships allow each other to feel what they are doing more consciously. As an example of the artificial environment and close people outside the models described above, one can mention the communes of students, artists, ancient Greek communes of the Epicureans, and related Christian monasteries. People in these isolated communities often felt happy through association with close people who shared their social and mental characteristics.
An example of uniting and achieving the ideas of happiness can be seen in the hippie subculture that began its existence in the 60s in the Western world. The hippie movement was born during the protests against continuing hostilities in Vietnam. Many former Beat Generation activists and participants of the Acid Tests joined the movement. Unusually dressed young people with long hair preached the ideas of pacifism, individuality, human unity, and inner freedom. They lived in communities of like-minded people, listened to rock and roll and psychedelic rock, traveled in brightly decorated vans to music festivals. A massive layer of literature, music, art, and philosophy is associated with them, often having happiness as their primary motive, both in a deep Epicurean, aesthetic, or purely hedonistic sense. Hippies have become one of the most significant youth movements on a global scale and have had a substantial impact on contemporary society and world culture as a whole.
The hippie subculture gained fame for the fact that often its members settled in the wilderness with their isolated communes, where nothing prevented the implementation of the ideals and principles of the movement. Rejection of consumerism, return to nature, mutual assistance, and equality for many became the slogans under which entire communities were formed. Some of them have survived today, such as The Farm – the oldest and most successful of the existing hippie communities. This is an international community in Tennessee, near the city of Summertown, living on the principles of non-violence and respect for the Earth, as well as the path to happiness for its members. It was founded in 1971 by Stephen Gaskin and 320 San Francisco hippies. Starting with a few huts and wagons, today, the Farm is an impressive area of cultivated land, several residential buildings, and outbuildings. This settlement not only achieved economic independence but also became quite an influential entity in the state of Tennessee.
Most of the commune runs on solar and wind energy, and the ability to coexist with nature without harming it is valued above all else. Some Buddhist teachings also entered the life of the commune. The inhabitants of the Farm lead a healthy lifestyle, produce organic products, and are engaged in scientific research in the field of renewable energy, environmental recycling, and assistance to Third World countries. However, their experience of finding peace, harmony, and happiness, coming from social equality and well-being, is a clear example of the collective nature of eudaimonic happiness from coexistence next to loved ones.
These ideas originate long before modern times and even more so long before the appearance of the first hippies in the middle of the twentieth century. The concepts of cohabitation, coexistence, and gaining freedom and happiness in isolation from society with friends and relatives originated in the days of classical Greece, at the time of high antiquity. In those days, philosophy as such was born, and it was between its fathers, such as Plato, Socrates, Epicurus, and other great minds, that there was a long discussion about the nature of happiness.
Determining the nature of happiness, called eudemonia in Greek, belongs to universal themes and Greek philosophy. The classic and one of the fathers of philosophy, Aristotle, believed that satisfaction is what all people strive for by themselves. The ancient philosopher devoted a significant part of his ethical treatises to the discussion of this subject. Afterward, only philosophers of the Stoic school gave it secondary importance among those who were familiar with the works of Aristotle. Although the standard Stoic sage was undoubtedly considered by the Stoic philosophers to have achieved happiness, they still paid primary attention to the question of the nature of virtue. Many characteristics of the early Platonic system of views on the nature of happiness are described in the ethical writings of Aristotle. Enjoyment for Plato’s adherents is associated with pleasure, wealth, or honor, which to a certain extent is also characteristic of the ideas of psychological egoism.
Aristotle, however, examines and rejects the positions offered by Plato regarding happiness. Equally, this classic of philosophy criticizes Plato’s assertion that happiness consists in the contemplation by the soul of the very idea of the good as such. However, this philosophical discourse of the two philosophers eventually underwent a series of transformations. The popular beliefs of the followers of the early Platonists reappeared in the form of a well-developed philosophical theory of happiness. So the idea that happiness is pleasure, rejected by Aristotle in his reflections on ethics, was later revived in the teachings of Epicurus. Epicurus has had a powerful influence on the hedonistic view of happiness and the role of selfishness in its acquisition and deserves an important place in any discussion of happiness and hedonism.
Epicurus, as a philosopher, dealt with the solution of many philosophical issues, entered into multiple discourses and had a rather unique position in many topics that are still relevant to this day. One of these is the question of happiness and its achievement, of what is needed for a person’s harmonious and peaceful existence as a human being. Epicureanism teaches that pleasure, physical and mental health, freedom from fear and prejudice, and friendship are the source of human happiness. According to the Greek Epicurean philosophers, one should not be afraid of the gods, and one should not be scared of death. Each desire should be evaluated from the standpoint of what will happen to a person as a result of their satisfaction or dissatisfaction, and this is the brief essence of Epicurean philosophy. Unfortunately, of the numerous works of Epicurus, only crumbs have survived to this day, but even from them, it is quite possible to get a complete picture of the essence of this teaching.
Epicureanism proclaims pleasure as a substantial value but rejects hedonism, the desire to revel at the moment, forgetting about the future and the past. Instead, Epicurus calls for enjoyment as a permanent state of mind. The philosopher came to the conclusion that true happiness is revealed in the provision of the personal and private to the social common. The philosopher demonstrated his position by leaving his native city with his closest students to the countryside, where they built a construction that became the center of the first commune in history. In the commune, Epicureanism adherents found the meaning of happiness, in the absence of wealth and poverty among the members of this community, in communication, joint work, and rest. Contact with loved ones, collective work and rest, creativity, and tranquility have become the very secret of happiness for the followers of the philosopher.
As can be seen from the ideas of the ancient classics of philosophy, egoism in the phenomenology of happiness has always been controversial to the same extent as collectivism and sociality. All these systems were based on the subjectivity of the author’s or their followers’ perception of happiness as such. Happiness travels through time and minds from Plato and Socrates, who thought of happiness as the pursuit of virtue as a phenomenon or feeling that originates from money, power, and influence, and up to Epicurus. Epicurus and his students, inspired by the collective source of happiness, eventually found happiness in a quiet, isolated life alone with each other. At the same time, none of their discourse opponents ever found happiness and did not declare it, only going into attempts to search for the root of the phenomenon itself.
Despite all the examples described above, happiness is subjective, and this is the only fact whose debatable potential in modern times, if not exhausted, then is of less importance than at the dawn of philosophy. This phenomenon’s subjectivity implies that happiness for each individual consists of its components, and even its very essence is different for each person. The perception of happiness by a person is influenced by their experience of existence, communication, emotions, fears, traumas, and way of thinking.
The abstract essence of the mind and consciousness of a person striving for rationalization, at the same time, constantly reduces such ephemeral phenomena as happiness to something intimate and incomprehensible to many people around. That is why people who surround the individual can share their view of the world and existence and have a similar definition and idea of happiness to help achieve it. The consensus among such people always leads to reflections and conclusions that give happiness a conceptually complete look. Thus, even considering the individual nature of the perception of happiness, hinting at possible egoism in the ways of achieving it, it has a social core in reality.
I believe that the ideas of Joel Feinberg, representing the way of finding happiness through selfishness, are correct in motives yet, the idea that it rises from or is supported by selfishness is wrong. As demonstrated above, it is the social, collective approach to finding the happiness of each individual that works best. Surrounded by close people with similar views and practices to the perception of the world, who are ready to support the thought of their friend, these people can find happiness. It does not matter if it is a family, church, or hippie community. In the end, all of them are essentially a union of people, in many ways not similar, but striving to find themselves and their place in the world, to find happiness and peace.
Conclusion
To conclude, a selfish approach can have an effect on individuals because, in the end, all people are different. Yet, for the majority, it is the social path to knowing oneself, the world around, and one’s place in it that works and can present the desired outcome. Despite this, Feinberg is right that people are happy when they can fully engage and perceive things that are important to them. Such things can be a religious and aesthetic experience, self-expression, knowledge, control, and the like. Nevertheless, the philosopher’s idea lacks an important component, namely close companions for a person.