QuestionsWhat is happiness?Happiness is not in the plan of Creation
What is happiness?No lasting happiness

Happiness is not in the plan of Creation

Happiness is not in the plan of Creation

Sigmund Freud 1856 · 1939Religion is an illusion born of the wish to be protected, as a child by its father.
See profile
What it claims

Lasting happiness is not provided for man: our possibilities of happiness are limited by our constitution, and it is far easier to be unhappy. The most realistic aim is to avoid suffering.

Why

We enjoy intensely only by contrast, so only in moments, while misery threatens us constantly from three sides.

In short

"Happiness is not in the plan of Creation" is an argument by Sigmund Freud (Civilization and Its Discontents, II (1930)) on the question "What is happiness?" (answer: no lasting happiness). Its claim: Lasting happiness is not provided for man: our possibilities of happiness are limited by our constitution, and it is far easier to be unhappy. The most realistic aim is to avoid suffering. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Civilization and Its Discontents, II (1930)
Valid with an implicit premise

Freud, a physician and the founder of psychoanalysis, asks in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) what people expect from life. The answer is simple: to be happy and to stay so. But this programme, which Freud calls the pleasure principle, is at odds with the whole world. His argument differs from Schopenhauer's (the pendulum between lack and boredom): it is not about a desire that keeps coming back but about two limits. First our constitution: we feel strongly only a contrast, never a state that lasts. Then the world: misery threatens us from three sides at once, the body, nature and other people. Freud does not conclude that we should despair, but that people lower their claims and first try to avoid suffering. Later in chapter II he reviews the methods people have invented for this (drugs, control of the drives, sublimation): none is safe.

P1People want to be happy and to stay so: to avoid pain and to experience strong pleasures. This is the programme of the pleasure principle.
P2This programme cannot be carried out: everything in the universe works against it. The intention that man be happy is not contained in the plan of "Creation".
P3Happiness in the strict sense springs from the sudden satisfaction of a greatly dammed-up need: it exists only in episodes. A situation that lasts gives only a lukewarm comfort, because we enjoy intensely only contrast.
P4Unhappiness, by contrast, is easy to experience: suffering threatens us from three sides, from our body doomed to decay, from the external world, and from our relations with other people.
P5 · implicit premiseA lasting happiness would require that the pleasure programme be achievable, that enjoyment be able to last, and that suffering not threaten us constantly.
Therefore lasting happiness is not provided for man: our possibilities of happiness are limited by our constitution, and it is far easier to be unhappy. The most realistic aim is to avoid suffering.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a world where the programme is unachievable, enjoyment is episodic and suffering threatens, and yet a lasting happiness exists anyway, for example a calm that depends on no strong enjoyment. This is the point the Epicureans attack.
Valid with P5, which Freud does not state in one sentence but which his reasoning assumes: lasting happiness would require an achievable programme, enjoyment that lasts, and no permanent threat. Without P5, nothing rules out a lasting happiness that would escape these three obstacles.
Analogy. You are very thirsty after a match: the first sip of water is intense happiness. Ten minutes later your glass of water barely does anything for you. The water has not changed, the contrast has gone. Meanwhile a knee, the weather or an argument can spoil the day without warning. Freud says: that is our condition.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

E
Epicurus (the pleasure of rest) 300 BC · attacks premise 3

There are two kinds of pleasures: those of motion, like joy, which are episodes, and those of rest, the absence of pain and disturbance. The latter can last. So happiness is not only an episode of strong enjoyment, and a wise person can live in tranquillity for a long time.

Freud replies
Freud (in the same chapter) What Freud concedes
Freud describes this retreat: under the pressure of suffering, people lower their claim to happiness and already count themselves happy to have escaped misfortune; the task of avoiding pain then takes precedence over that of gaining pleasure. But he keeps the word "happiness", in the strict sense, for strong pleasures, which remain episodic.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: the disagreement is partly about words. For Epicurus, freedom from disturbance is the highest pleasure, not a second best; for Freud, it is a reduced claim. Freud does not discuss Epicurus.
E
Epictetus (disturbance comes from opinions) 125 · attacks premise 4

Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things. The body, the world and other people make us suffer only through what we think of them: by changing our judgement we can be free of this unhappiness.

Freud replies
Freud (on methods of this kind) Freud's answer
Freud does not cite Epictetus, but he examines this route, mastery of the drives, which oriental wisdom pushes as far as killing them. If one succeeds, one has given up every other activity and gained only the happiness of rest. With a more moderate control, the price is a clear loss in the capacity to enjoy: the satisfaction of a tamed drive is far less intense.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Freud's answer reaches Epictetus only in part. Epictetus speaks of judgements to correct, not drives to kill; a Stoic would answer that judging rightly takes nothing away from true joys. The body and the world remain, which Freud takes to be sources of suffering independent of our opinions.
Aristotle (happiness is an activity) 330 BC · attacks the conclusion

Happiness is not a moment of strong pleasure but the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, carried out in a complete life. One swallow does not make a summer: happiness is not judged by an episode. So understood, it is within man's reach.

Freud replies
Freud (on sublimation) Freud's answer
Freud does not cite Aristotle; the closest passage concerns the pleasures of the mind, the joy of the artist or the researcher. He finds them "finer and higher" but less intense and available to few people, who have rare gifts. Even for them they are no armour against the arrows of fate, and they fail when the body itself becomes the source of suffering.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: for Aristotle, happiness is not an intensity of pleasure but a way of living, and moral virtue is not reserved for the gifted. Freud measures happiness by the intensity of enjoyment: the two are not quite talking about the same thing.