Scotland
in the
heat
The Scottish Review is on holiday for a week over Easter. The magazine will resume normal publication on Tuesday 17 April. SR’s average weekly readership in the first quarter of this year was 17,446 compared with 13,326 in the corresponding quarter of last year.
The art form
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Scottish heart
George Gunn
on the purpose
of poetry
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Eriskay
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
I’m neurotic about being
happy. Happiness is
no laughing matter
Eileen Reid
Philosophers from time to time have tried to deny the importance of luck. Repulsed by the idea that a sage becomes a sage only by dint of good fortune rather than merit, they have tried to find a form of value immune to luck.
Rational activity is not the only ingredient to happiness however. A person also requires ’emotional intelligence’, that is, to be able to respond appropriately at an emotional level to life’s daily trials. To feel the right emotions at the right time, to the right degree, towards the right people, is to be emotionally intelligent. But to achieve this, we must keep the emotions in line, which is impossible without the guidance of reason. If we succeed we will lead a life in accordance with our true nature. And if we do it well, we will thrive. And this is what it is to be happy. Thus the belief that there is no such thing as happiness – just ‘happy’ moments – would not be shared by Aristotle.
All very well for Aristotle, but to respond appropriately at the right time, to the right degree, towards the right people, is no easy task. He does acknowledge the difficulty and admits achieving happiness is a long-term project with his famous phrase: ‘For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day or small space of time make a happy life’. He also takes it for granted that humans can only thrive in the right conditions. These include economic and social stability, and benefiting from a good education and a decent upbringing.
And here is the sting. Just as the Christians knew that our beatitude lies outside our control – being dependent upon grace and so forth – so the Greeks knew that while we can do much to improve our lot, flourishing requires a lot of luck: we do not choose our parents; we do not choose the economic and social background into which we are born; nor for the most part do we choose our cultural and educational opportunities. We do not choose to fall ill or to have partners who die prematurely, or children who die before we do. Life’s tragedies threaten to destroy our best efforts at leading a happy life so it is no surprise that the Greek and Roman gods of chance, Tyche and Fortuna, never wanted for supplicants.
Philosophers from time to time have tried to deny the importance of luck. Repulsed by the idea that a sage becomes a sage only by dint of good fortune rather than merit, they have tried to find a form of value immune to luck. For the Stoics and Kant for example, ‘what really matters’ is moral character (not thriving) and that moral character is immune to the vagaries of fortune. But the difficulty with this approach – apart from it being far from obvious that character is not a matter of luck – is that it fails to explain why anyone should want to have a good moral character if such a character is not connected to thriving.
The therapeutic value of the Aristotelian philosophy is that it is not only useful to know how we can live a happy life, but crucially, that human flourishing is not always in our own hands. Neurosis results if we fail to recognise this and instead pursue goals unworthy of our true nature, or if we fail to acknowledge that happiness often depends on luck. To acknowledge the latter, for me at any rate, is oddly satisfying and therapeutic. Anyway, I wouldn’t last a fortnight on an Italian mountain without my family, and no doubt would harbour a perverse longing for neurotic, gloomy, wet, chaotic, wonderful Glasgow. Nae luck.
Eileen Reid is head of widening participation, Glasgow School of Art,
writing here in a personal capacity
The Scottish Review is on holiday for a week over Easter. The magazine will resume normal publication on Tuesday 17 April.
