Joy and Happiness

What is happiness? According to the dictionary, it is the feeling of pleasure or contentment. Happiness is a main concept in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. However, because Aristotle originally wrote in Greek, happiness is not necessarily an exact translation. The word in the Greek language that Aristotle used was eudaimonia. The closest translation is happiness, but the Greek word also carries the meaning of success and fulfillment. "'To live well' or 'to do well' is the same as 'to be happy'" (Aristotle 5). In the Greek culture, that was mostly the case. Everybody wanted to be successful, own land, and have lots of money. Their lives were closely tied to the city-state in which they were living. There wasn't as much of a division between private life and public life, as there is in 21st century America. Because of this, happiness was more of a public affair rather than a private one. Eudaimonia was tied to how well other people saw you were living. In other words, happiness is a feeling based on circumstances.

Joy is much different. Joy is an attitude that defines circumstances. Many people equate happiness and joy in the wrong way. They think happiness leads to joy, or they say things like "happiness is temporary, joy is forever." However, those comparisons are not accurate. Joy leads to happiness in that being joyful can turn a bad situation into a good one and make you happy. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote about three unalienable rights: "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." I think Aristotle was writing about the pursuit of happiness as well. Not just happiness, but the active pursuit of it. He uses the Greek word energeia, or energy to describe happiness as an action rather than a state. In this way, Aristotle is kind of describing joy. Joy in the sense that you work for your happiness. This definition of joy is not quite accurate. Again, joy is an attitude. It doesn't take work to happy. If you are joyful about everything, you will be happy.

As you can tell, I very much disagree with a lot of Aristotle's writings. Probably the part I disagree with most is when he writes "Again, we conceive happiness to be the most desirable of all things... It appears then that happiness is something final and self-sufficient, being the end of all action" (Aristotle 14-15). In this he is saying that the goal for everything we do is for the final goal of happiness (pursuit of happiness). While this may be true enough for many people, I believe that our top goal should be to pursue a relationship with our Savior. When we do that, joy and happiness will be the result.