A history of happiness: 5 life lessons from the past

Historical studies of happiness have often been guided by the ancient Greek term eudaimonia, meaning the condition of living well – and societies and individuals able to live well enjoy more opportunities for happiness. Many ancient Greeks were, though, sceptical of the idea that happiness was achievable in this life, associating that state solely with the afterlife.

In a (likely fictional) conversation in the sixth century BC, the legendarily wealthy Lydian king Croesus asked Athenian lawmaker Solon whether he had met anyone better off than him. Solon listed several men who lived honourable and sacrificial lives, dying for their people.

When Croesus asked whether his own eudaimonia – his economic success and luxurious lifestyle – meant nothing, Solon replied that you could not judge whether a person was happy until they had ended their life well, emphasising virtuous living over material pleasures. The philosopher Democritus similarly argued that “both happiness and misfortune pertain to the soul. Happiness does not reside in cattle or gold,” advising people to put aside their worldly concerns.

In contrast, 18th-century American revolutionaries placed the “pursuit of Happiness” at the heart of their vision for a new nation, writing it into the Declaration of Independence. With the rapid growth in wealth and available consumables, new pleasures could soon be purchased. Rich furnishings and cloths made homes warm and comfortable; food technologies that added salt, sugar and flavourings heightened the delights of eating; cheap clothing created new desires and fuelled aspirations.

Deadly sins?

Not everyone was happy about this shift in emphasis – and greed, gluttony and other excesses were deemed sins in many religions. But 18th-century philosophers such as Adam Smith encouraged people to worry less about the morality of luxury and instead embrace the benefits of trade and consumption. “Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences and amusements of human life,” Smith argued. He thought that the ability to buy consumables was a good measure of wider social happiness.

The following century, Karl Marx argued that capitalism encouraged people to hoard money rather than enjoy the fullness of life: “The less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theatre, go dancing, go drinking, think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence etc, the more you save... The less you are, the less you give expression to your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the more you store up of your estranged life.” Capitalism, then, alienated people from their desires, reducing the possibility of a flourishing and happy life.

2. Adopt a healthy attitude

Being in good physical health and living moderately have almost universally been seen as positives.

Healthy living has long been thought to contribute to happiness. Advice for good health has remained remarkably consistent across the ages, often based on the second century physician Galen’s six ‘non-naturals’. People should drink water and eat nutritiously, take exercise and rest, breathe good air, sleep, manage bodily evacuations, and control the passions. Moderation was typically key: too much of a good thing was thought to have detrimental health impacts, so the history of health advice is typically also a story of self-control.

Emotions such as happiness had a complicated role in the history of healthy moderation. How much happiness was too much? And when did such feelings themselves impact health? Laurent Joubert, a scholar at the University of Montpellier in the 16th century, wrote a leading treatise on laughter. He argued that “because being joyful and ready to laugh indicates a good nature and purity of blood, it thus contributes to the health of the body and of the mind”. His colleagues thought that laughter was an important counterpoint to labour, refreshing men after a long day’s work and the serious business of study and contemplation, and allowing women to express their ‘natural’ gaiety.

Scottish doctor George Cheyne was more ambivalent in his writing on the functioning of the nervous system a century later. “Sudden Gust of Joy or Grief, Pleasure or Pain, stimulate and spur the Nervous Fibres, and the Coats of the Animal Tubes,” he argued, “thus both sudden Joy and Grief, make us breath short and quick, and make our Pulse small and frequent.” If these passions were sustained, over time they would “wear out, waste, and destroy the Nervous System”. To maintain health, people were urged to control their passions, experiencing happiness in small doses. A calm equilibrium might be preferable.

Pleasure gardens

How should one achieve a healthy life? Advice suggesting good air, rest and exercise pointed to rural living. The Athenian philosopher Epicurus established a school in his garden, which became a long-lasting symbol of a hedonistic life without pain. There he could concentrate on pleasure, the life of the mind and friendship. This choice of location was controversial because it rejected the social obligations of participating in political and civic life.

Nature was also a prominent source of happiness for the Romantics of the 19th century. William Wordsworth, for example, described the “bliss of solitude” that “my heart with pleasure fills” in his poem on walking among daffodils.

• Read more | Jane Austen's tips for “health and happiness”

3. Play happy families

Good relations were commended as key to happiness in religion and law.

The role of families and strong social networks in maintaining happiness was emphasised to early modern Catholics, who were directed to view the Holy Family as a model to emulate. Saint Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary, “joyfully aided in childbirth, made peace, reconciled with love, [and] cleaned eyes with [her] medicinal and healing virtue”, preached the Franciscan Juan de Alvarado to his Mexican audience in 1736. Families who behaved similarly would enter into “happinesses without scarcity and happinesses that reaches the peak of good fortune”, claimed another Spanish-Mexican preacher, Iván Díaz de Arce, a century earlier.

Early modern Protestants placed similar emphasis on the pleasures of family. In 1693, English minister Thomas Whitaker proclaimed that “dutiful, obedient Children” were “the Joy and Crown of their parents”. Some argued that, because children were naturally “inclined to Joy”, they offered an example of the ideal human condition. And the French mystic Pierre Poiret Naudé (1646–1719) thought that children showed the “final and perfective facultie of our Souls, which in effect were made for nothing else but to solace themselves in joy, in pleasure and contentment”. In other words, children provided a model for happiness.

The happy family only grew in political importance, and in the 19th century the state was called on to ensure its maintenance. Seduction suits, in which men sued the lovers of their wives or daughters for their “corruption”, were available in law because the happy family was central to national security.

In 1831, Irish barrister Charles Phillips explained in court that, before she eloped with her lover, one Mrs Guthrie had been the “organ and ornament” of her husband’s happiness. Phillips encouraged jurors to order significant compensation to reflect the “religion defiled, morals insulted, law despised, public order foully violated, and individual happiness wantonly wounded”.

Joy in dark times

Not all families were equally entitled to show happiness. Displays of joy by black families were used by some American anti-abolitionists to justify slavery and contest the political rights of the black population – if people were happy while enslaved, they did not need freedom. They were thus discouraged from behaving cheerfully in public.

In 1931, American writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston argued that to deny joy was destructive for black families: “Though the heart is breaking, happiness can exist in a moment, also. And because the moment in which we live is all the time there really is, we can keep going.”

Hurston recognised that the expression of happiness, particularly within families and communities, was an important way through which people found the strength to survive. Later civil rights activists positioned joy as a political emotion that allowed black people living in a racist society to rejuvenate and find strength.

4. Find faith and fortune

Major religions decree that living a virtuous life is the route to happiness.

Throughout history, not every society has been convinced that happiness is within human control. Indeed, the modern English word derives from hap or happ, meaning fortune or luck in Middle English and Old Norse. Notably, the etymological link between luck and happiness can be found in most Indo-European languages, as well as further afield.

The Chinese character for happiness is also that used to denote good fortune. In Korean, which long used the Chinese writing system, that character (bok) is pronounced very like the word for bat (obok); pictures of bats appear on many charms and gifts, representing both happiness and fortune. Achieving happiness was ultimately in the hands of the gods – but, with some luck, individuals might be able to attract their attention and solicit joy.

Happiness has sometimes been construed as a form of blessing or even a reward for a life well lived. Most of the major religions have advocated pathways by which their adherents could live virtuously and, thus, might hope to achieve happiness.

Buddhists promote the performance of good deeds, including giving generously and associating with wise people, as key to living happily. The highest form of happiness, however, is not an emotion at all. According to the canonical religious texts compiled in the fourth to fifth centuries, nirvana was a form of enlightenment marked by an absence of feeling. Happiness could easily become unhappiness, so reaching a state of nirvana meant moving beyond the possibility of suffering.

Piety before pleasure

Early Islamic texts promoted balance and self-control as central to a piety that should be practised in everyday life. Happiness was not a goal in itself, but was one of the emotions that contributed to virtuous living. Good Muslims should “rejoice” in “God’s favour and in His mercy” rather than in “what they have accumulated”, warned the Qur’an. Expressions of pleasure could also be immoral, and those who laughed at Muslim believers were considered sinners.

On Earth, happiness might lead one away from God, as well as towards him. Ultimately, however, the afterlife was a place of complete satisfaction where “believers rejoice in what God has given them”. Virtuous living could be accompanied by joy but, just as importantly, it brought God’s favour in eternity.

5. Harness the power of words

Nothing beats curling up with a good book for sparking delight.

The life of the mind – thinking and learn- ing – has long been viewed as a pleasure, so of course reading has an important role in the pursuit of happiness. The 14th-century writer and Bishop of Durham, Richard de Bury, thought that “nothing... compared” to a library, and that any “follower of truth, of happiness, of wisdom, of science, or even of the faith, must of necessity make himself a lover of books”.

Around the turn of the 18th century, English theatre critic Jeremy Collier wrote that books “help us to forget the crossness of men and things; compose our cares and our passions; and lay our disappointments asleep”. And, according to his biographer Sir George Trevelyan, historian Thomas Macaulay believed that reading was “a main element of happiness in one of the happiest lives”.

Let’s be other people

Books offer the reader the chance to enter into new worlds and to imagine themselves as other people, both of which were seen as contributing to the value of reading and to the joys of a life of the mind.

The 17th-century Dutch-Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza rejected a life limited to basic survival or necessities, arguing: “When we say... that the best state is one where men pass their lives harmoniously, I mean that they pass a human life, one defined not merely by the circulation of blood... but mostly by reason, the true virtue and life of the mind.” To live a full and happy life, individuals need to be provided with the opportunity to think, read, fantasise and aspire.

In the 1940s, the psychologist Abraham Maslow took up these ideas in his famous “hierarchy of needs”. Maslow was part of the ‘positive psychology’ movement that wished to move the field beyond thinking merely about mental illness, instead working towards supporting optimum wellbeing. Maslow thought that happiness could not be achieved if basic needs such as food, housing and family were not met. But to be truly satisfied, he believed, people also needed to fulfil their potential – and that meant attending to their desires, aspirations and fantasies.

Happy individuals, he observed, were “lusty animals, hearty in their appetites, and enjoying themselves mightily”, able to move beyond themselves to help others, “capable of more fusion, greater love, more perfect identification” than most. To achieve this state, however, required a deep awareness of one’s values, dreams and place in the world – and, therefore, an active life of the mind.

• Listen | The history of happiness in an episode of Free Thinking on BBC Radio 3

Katie Barclay is professor and ARC Future Fellow at Macquarie University, Sydney and co-editor of The Routledge History of Happiness (Routledge, 2024)