Happiness, Plato says, is expectedly and understandably that for which every human being constantly strives. But the happiness about which Plato speaks in his thinking-philosophizing is different from our contemporary thinking toward and referring to happiness.
Happiness, for us, is a feeling; short-lived or abiding. Happiness, for Plato and in ancient Greek thought, refers to and marks a life in its entirety.
Another difference between the contemporary turning toward happiness and the ancient thinking toward happiness is that in ancient thought happiness has an objective aspect, which is that the happy life should contain goodness within itself and be itself good. In other words, a happy life should not only feel good; it itself should be good; it should constantly direct itself toward goodness.
Plato’s announcement that happiness is expectedly and understandably that for which every human is constantly striving should not be understood as an invitation allowing and calling upon every human being to satisfy its own unlimited, uncontrolled, or perhaps disordered desires.
Happiness, for Plato, takes place only when genuinely good things are rightly possessed and correctly used. But this means neither that our desires should not be satisfied nor that the satisfying of our desires should be divorced from happiness. Plato’s attempt is merely to show how the harmonious/ordered soul only desires what is genuinely good and how the satisfaction of desiring occurs only through the possession and usage of genuinely good things.
But what are the things that are genuinely good? And how could our possession and correct use of such things make us happy or bring about happiness in our lives?
In the Philebus, Socrates says and argues that the happy life, which is also good and holds goodness within itself, is a mixture of knowledge and pleasure. In the Republic, Socrates says that happiness is grounded in justice in the sense that the human being must be just if it is ever to be happy. In the Euthydemus, Socrates persuades Clinias into philosophy after showing how wisdom enables human beings to greatly benefit from many goods.
In the Gorgias and the Republic, Socrates says that virtue brings about happiness in our lives and makes us happy. Another claim, for which Socrates also argues, is that those who have virtue are happier than those who lack virtue. Both arguments render virtuousness and happiness closely related and connected.
The Republic clarifies and confirms this close relatedness by describing justice as a harmonious state of the soul, resembling and similar to the health of the body and the perfection of reason in its contemplating and knowing of the form of the good. This example shows how happiness is a scope in which desires could be satisfied and genuinely good things could also be possessed and correctly used.
But because, according to this example, happiness occurs when the forms are contemplated, a pursuit that is obstructed and impeded by our bodily condition, it is often argued that, for Plato, philosophers could be truly and genuinely happy only after their death.
Finally, Plato’s political thinking-philosophizing is also directed toward happiness and often questions how those who govern should be responsible for making the governed happy, since, for Plato, the aim of any legislation should be the happiness of the citizens.
Camus and Life
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus speaks of two kinds of suicide. The first one is the event of killing oneself; the second one is faith as a philosophical suicide.
In the writings and works of Camus, two forms of hope are placed over against each other: infinite hope and finite hope.
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus thinks from out the question of suicide, toward and into happiness, whose dwelling place is the heart of Sisyphus. But how could that whose origin is the meaninglessness of existence and the possibility of rendering oneself forever absent encounter itself eventually as happiness and joy?