I got pulled into a Wikipedia rabbit hole yesterday.* And since we’re here, I’ll take you on my journey.
*This is not uncommon for me, as I suspect it’s not for you if you’re a person who says to themselves “let me just look that up quickly” as frequently as I do
I was watching the New York Rangers game yesterday. They have a player recently called up named Cole Beaudoin (pronounced bow-DWANNE), which got me saying the quote “Leopold to my Baudouin, huh Dad?”, pronounced the same way as the hockey player. That line is from the movie Quiz Show, which I love. So I popped on to Wikipedia and went to the movie’s page. From there, I went to Paul Scofield’s page (he played Charles Van Doren’s father Mark). That took me to Mark Van Doren’s page, which ultimately took me to Charles Van Doren’s page and that’s where I got caught up reading about his life.*
*Fascinating, right? Join me next time when I describe how I clean every room of my house to 80% and then can’t find anything
Van Doren lived the kind of very interesting life that can stem from being the scion of a very famous and scholarly family, but also seems rarer and rarer these days. He got an M.A. in Astrophysics and then a Ph.D in English (both from Columbia University, where his father taught and wrote). He knew a lot about a lot, and between that and his Harry Styles good looks, it’s easy to see why he’d be a popular choice for the game show Twenty One on early television, especially if that game show were rigged and they hand select anyone as the reigning champion.
Van Doren rarely talked about his role in those Quiz Show Scandals* and he rarely went back to Columbia University following his resignation. But he did return in 1999 to celebrate the 40th reunion of the Class of 1959 (the last class during which he was a faculty member). And in his remarks, he said this (emphasis mine):
Some of you read with me forty years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics, a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well. I remember better, because, despite the abrupt caesura in my academic career that occurred in 1959, I have gone on teaching the humanities almost continually to students of all kinds and ages. In case you don't remember, then, I remind you that according to Aristotle happiness is not a feeling or sensation but instead is the quality of a whole life. The emphasis is on "whole," a life from beginning to end. Especially the end. The last part, the part you're now approaching, was for Aristotle the most important for happiness. It makes sense, doesn't it?
*The exception to this being this fascinating article that appeared in the New Yorker in 2008. And if you haven’t seen the movie and/or aren’t familiar with the scandals around quiz shows in the 1950s, it’s worth reading up on.
OK, so if I haven’t given away the game yet, I’m not here to talk about the Quiz Show Scandals. I got really caught up in that line from Aristotle, not just because it’s an interesting take, but because I think in an age where instant gratification* is positioned as the way to contentment, this type of patience of not really being able to assess the full notion of happiness until the end of your life creates really wonderful tension.
*I write this as my daughter DoorDashes Starbucks to a car dealership while we wait for an oil change and service
For Aristotle*, happiness isn’t pleasure or contentment or satisfaction. Those are feelings that can accompany happiness, but they don’t cut at the essence of happiness. The essence of happiness has to do with cultivating character, living virtuously and engaging meaningfully with the world over time. There’s a crucial distinction there because in that framework, happiness is something you do, not something you feel.
*I was very nearly a double major in college, the second being Philosophy, but (very ironically in this specific context), I ditched too many 8:30am Plato & Aristotle classes as a second semester senior to get a grade high enough to qualify for credit toward the major. I guess I’ll just have to settle for being a blowhard.
There’s a lot of layers to Aristotle’s thought process here, which I’m going to sum up as quickly as possible. First, happiness is not the accumulation of stuff*. A person can enjoy extraordinary pleasures and still live a fundamentally bad life. Second, character matters more than circumstance and develops through repetition. We become courageous by acting courageously, generous by practicing generosity, etc. Third, time is essential. One good act does not make a good person, any more than one successful afternoon makes a successful life.
*Or, as George Carlin would say, “shit”
His ultimate position is more nuanced than the idea that we need to wait until someone dies to judge their life. We can recognize a life well lived while someone is living it (to be super heavy-handed, the virtue of Mother Teresa was easy to identify while she was alive), but the completeness of a life can only be understood over time.
So once you consider the tension between happiness being something you actively pursue every day and the notion that you can’t truly evaluate happiness in the minute, then you have to reframe the whole concept of what it means to be happy and live well. The question we ask ourselves shifts from “am I happy?” to “am I living in a way that makes happiness possible?” Those are profoundly different questions. One is asking us to assess our emotional state. The other is encouraging us to examine our decision making process.
I’m going to be brutally honest here. I haven’t read some or even most of Ethics, so I’m far from an expert on Aristotle or this work specifically. I’m willing to concede Aristotle’s general point that a good life requires some measure of consistency of character or purpose. There’s no single moment in anyone’s life that can actually demonstrate that*. That point requires a consistent collection of moments. One point for Hufflepuff there.
*I think a lot about Mindy St. Claire, the character from The Good Place who inhabits the Medium Place because she made a lot of money, had the intention of creating a charity during a cocaine high and before she was able to do it got hit by a train, so she didn’t really qualify for the Good or the Bad Place
But that’s not a complete measure of happiness. A lifetime of virtue may be something needed to flourish cosmically, but it cannot fully account for the spontaneous, magical experiences that actually make life beautiful and bring unsolicited joy. Those experiences aren’t interchangeable with the instant gratification that comes from buying the shoes you’ve been eyeing in the SNKRS app. They’re more like the rush you get from making your partner to laugh until they wheeze. My perspective is that joy and virtue aren’t in opposition. I’d argue they’re compatible. They feed into and off of one another.
I don’t believe the purpose of living virtuously is to end your life at Happiness Junction*. I think that’s part of it. But I think that the happiness we encounter along the way is equally important and just as important to recognize in the moment, because that’s exactly the thing that helps us continue living virtuously. The reward is the motivation.
*Happiness Junction is a hub, so you get there even if you’re on your way to Depressionville. Did that 1940s train joke do anything for you? No?
Aristotle is right when he says that one swallow doesn’t make a summer, to use the metaphor he puts out in Ethics. But that doesn’t mean the first swallow isn’t beautiful, or that seeing it doesn’t fill us with the feeling that summer is on its way. I’ll state that slightly differently. You don’t have to wait until November to appreciate June. You can do that on June 1st.
We may need a lifetime to judge whether we’ve lived a life of virtue, but we don’t need a lifetime to recognize that life is good, if even only for the moment. We can do that right now.
I’m going back to my alma mater (Binghamton University) on Monday to present to some student leaders. I’ve been back a few times in the last couple of years to do this and I have to say, in spite of the campus looking very different in many ways, you can still feel the energy of what it was like when I was there. I read a book years ago called Boy’s Life by Robert R. McKammon and there’s a quote in the book:
We will not tarry long here, because my hometown is not our home, but an hour would be time well spent.
That’s how I feel about visiting. It’s nice to dip into the past, but best to live in the present. Fall brings out the philosopher in me. I can’t help it.
That’s all for this week. Until next time, friends.