What is happiness? Is it even worth pursuing? Is a happy life different from a meaningful one?

In this episode I try to clear up some confusion surrounding the word “happiness”. We typically think of happiness as being synonymous with positive emotion—joy, bliss, excitement, all of those kinds of emotions—but Nietzsche hates this. He tends to define true happiness as involving a strong sense of meaning or purpose and he tends to harshly criticize anyone who ignores this component of happiness. And indeed, the science does seem to align with him on this point. I compare Nietzsche’s criticisms of this purely hedonic happiness with the founder of modern positive psychology, Martin Seligman’s PERMA theory of human well-being in addition to my usual exploration of what these issues have to do with everyday people like you and me.

Some Sources/Further Reading:

• The Portable Nietzsche edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann
• Basic Writings of Nietzsche edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann
• Bett, Richard. “Nietzsche, the Greeks, and Happiness (with Special Reference to Aristotle and Epicurus).” Philosophical Topics, vol. 33, no. 2, 2005, pp. 45–70. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43154726. 
• Existentialism by Robert Solomon
• From Rationalism to Existentialism: The Existentialists and Their Nineteenth-century Backgrounds by Robert Solomon
• Spirituality for the Skeptic: The Thoughtful Love of Life by Robert Solomon
• Nietzsche: A Very Short Introduction by Michael Tanner
• Happiness: A History by Darrin M. McMahon
• Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
• Flourish (A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being) by Marin Seligman
• Is a Happy Life Different From a Meaningful Life?
• Take the PERMA-profiler

Featured Music:

• Monplaisir — Everything is true 
• Rex Orange County — UNO