Happiness

Happiness is “elusive” and “poorly understood,” suggests Lomas (Translating Happiness), a research affiliate at Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program, in this straightforward introduction to the concept. Lomas defines happiness as “a desirable mental experience of quality, which encompasses wide swathes of psychological states relating to well-being,” and notes that the term didn’t take on that definition until the 1590s, when “burgeoning secularism began to generate new modes of inquiry.” Lomas explores what it meant to be happy in Mesopotamia (the small joys emphasized in The Epic of Gilgamesh give a good glimpse) and BCE China (when constant change was believed to be the path to well-being), as well as the role of happiness in religion, such as the joy of the mitzvah in Judaic teachings. Turning to the present, Lomas examines how happiness has been conceptualized by science, expertly drawing on genetics, neurochemistry, and psychology, and offering a taxonomy of 14 “flavors” of the emotion, including hedonic, mature, vital, evaluative, and accomplished. Lomas sagely observes that there’s “a blurry line between whether something can be deemed to create happiness... or influence it,” and while the more academic second half will best suit philosophy or psychology students, the first half will work its charm on all comers. Readers with an interest in positive psychology will find this a fine place to start. (Sept.)