Joy is something one undergoes: it happens to us. — StreetlightX

And yet: "this makes me happy", "that makes me unhappy".

Without some formalized distinction, "joy" and "happiness" are interchangeable in many contexts.

I think that joy is a great topic which probably gets left out of philosophy as a topic, with a whole emphasis on happiness as something to be achieved as a lasting state. That may be hard to achieve for many, but we can have moments of joy, even if they are only fleeting ones.

Also, perhaps philosophy becomes too heavy at times. This can include the angst and searching for answers. Also, the whole stressful dimensions of people trying to argue that their views are right in a dogmatic or competitive way. This may take us beyond the experience of the potential joy of philosophy.

This has been my view for years, which I think of in a Spinozist sense as 'active & passive affects' corresponding, IIRC, somewhat to Nietzsche's 'active & passive nihilisms'. (I'll dig up some quotes if you like for you interpretation but they're probably easy enough to find yourself.) Ecstasy vs contentment. Joy vs happiness. Eudaimonia vs hedonia. Dionysus vs the Crucified. Playing guitar vs playing "Guitar Hero"....

Ecstasy vs contentment. Joy vs happiness. Eudaimonia vs hedonia. — 180 Proof

Maybe this is an English language thing, to juxtapose joy and happiness this way.

I don't think it's merely that. Spinoza & Nietzsche, whom I mentioned, did not write or think (as far as we call tell) in English or in each other's respective mother tongue for that matter (though, of course, both were highly literate in Latin). The concepts are distinct more in philosophy than, perhaps, in (folk) psychology.

Without some formalized distinction, "joy" and "happiness" are interchangeable in many contexts. — baker

For sure. But I'm trying to isolate tendencies and forge a vocabulary out of them, as it were. To see where it may lead.

What pairs of terms did they use, in their languages, respectively?

Anyway, a small thread with small stakes, curious to see what others might think. — StreetlightX

Orson Welles put it like this and I am paraphrasing, "A warthog can be happy. Joy is a great big electrical experience."

This has been my view for years, which I think of in a Spinozist sense as 'active & passive affects' corresponding, IIRC, somewhat to Nietzsche's 'active & passive nihilisms'. (I'll dig up some quotes if you like for you interpretation but they're probably easy enough to find yourself.) Ecstasy vs contentment. Joy vs happiness. Eudaimonia vs hedonia. Dionysus vs the Crucified. Playing guitar vs playing "Guitar Hero".... — 180 Proof

Yeah, this philosophical inheritance is definitely in the background here. And thinking about it, of course I left out the linking of joy and potential for action (capacity or power).

I guess I'm looking for a way to be critical about joy, such that not all joy is 'good'. I'm interested in how happiness qua contentedness can be aligned with a certain self-contentedness in an almost pejorative sense. The political part of me wants to call it 'bourgeois happiness', a happiness that allows one to turn a blind eye to injustice and even active maliciousness. Killers can enjoy, and it's clear that - for instance - the Trump cult was built on a edifice of enjoyment that most people - including myself - still struggle to get our heads around. You can find it too in the almost alimentary effects visible in say, the rhythm of marching of the SS, in uniform, bursting with pride. How to be critical about that kind of joy?

'Happy' is often synonymous with 'satisfied.'

Satisfaction is the death of hunger, curiosity, etc. The ultimate satisfaction is oblivion.

Orson Welles put it like this and I am paraphrasing, "A warthog can be happy. Joy is a great big electrical experience." — Tom Storm

Yeah this too! Joy as contagion, ecstatic (in the etymological sense of going outside 'ex'), and infectious. Wanna contast this with the centripetal notion of happiness.

What would be the opposite of "joy" and "happiness"?

You name it but it's surely not "fear"
It's not fear because the opposite of fear is "courage"

I mentioned fear because courage affects joy but not necessarily happiness, while fear affects them both regardless.

One may enjoy (feel joy) in being brave to do what ever he wants at that point.
But there is no guarantee this makes him happy for doing it right?

On another side if you feel fear it will affect both your joy and happiness.

/.../ You can find it too in the almost alimentary effects visible in say, the rhythm of marching of the SS, in uniform, bursting with pride. How to be critical about that kind of joy? — StreetlightX

For that kind of criticism, some metaphysical/transcendental edifice is necessary, or a big enough ego.

I believe that happiness is a stable, balanced state of existence which is consistent with true well-being derived from an inner source of contentment. Joy seems to be more euphoric, requiring external stimulus, and therefore unsustainable in the long term. So I see the difference in temporal terms, whereas happiness is a long term passive well-being which is conducive to consistency in actions, joy is a short term, more of a manic type of thing, which may produce extreme good, but being less balanced it could slip the other way.

Joy is a state of emotional well-being in the yellow category of emotions(Emotions are typically split into three categories, red(concerning wrath), yellow(concerning kindness) and blue(concerning sadness)). Happiness is based on, as the OP states, an inner smile, but the key questions are "why am I happy?" and "how does happiness occur?".

I argue that kindness effects either category of emotions in a positive way(and other categories play significant roles), and joy is a reflection of euphoria in the yellow category. Happiness, an inner smile generated by(where kindness is associated) an event which pleased our(where all emotions are associated) senses.

I've only read them in English, not in Latin & German, respectively. Both probably use "joy" & "happiness". Why that matters to you I can't fathom. Do you have a question relevant to the topic as expressed in either my first post or the OP?

How to be critical about that kind of joy? — StreetlightX

Does an 'expression of joy' lead to (or come from) emancipatory / transgressive conduct or servile / debased conduct? Is it used for medicine or to poison? Maybe something along those lines ...

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Given the two options you present as presented, then yes, I think "joy" is better than "happiness".

I'd be satisfied with being "interested" in something, that is, being taken in by a subject, or person or event or place. It need not reach the "burden" of being in a positive emotional state necessarily.

Of course, if someone feels they are at rock bottom, then nothing may suffice for the time being. But I feel that with "interest" one can withstand considerable unpleasantness.

So: I think what bothers me about 'happiness' is - as least, as it strikes me intuitively - is that it tends to function as a psychological category, which is to say it is individual and 'hedonic'. — StreetlightX

Joy, on the other hand, is not a state. Rather it is an event, or it has event-like characteristics. Joy is something one undergoes: it happens to us. — StreetlightX

I had a similar intuïtion... interestingly enough if you look at the etymological roots of the words it seems to have been the other way around historically.

Happiness comes from luck (happ), being fortunate, which points more to the material state of a person in relation to the world, rather than a psychological state... something that 'happ'ens to someone.

Joy then seems to have been associated throughout history with an inner feeling, a pleasurable sensation... which would be more in line with 'hedonic'.

Don't know if this necessarily has any bearing on how we use the terms now, maybe it has, but I thought it interesting at least, if only because of the shifts in meaning.

The political part of me wants to call it 'bourgeois happiness', a happiness that allows one to turn a blind eye to injustice and even active maliciousness. — StreetlightX

If one is happy in the historical meaning of the word (lucky, fortunate) one would probably be more inclined to turn a blind eye to the injustices of a system that has benefited you more than most.

I'd be satisfied with being "interested" in something, that is, being taken in by a subject, or person or event or place. It need not reach the "burden" of being in a positive emotional state necessarily. — Manuel

I can totally dig that. I've always felt that being 'taken' by things - even when they challenge, frustrate, and grate against one's self - is sometimes a far more desirable state of being than any sort of happiness (give me a good challenge and I'll give up all happiness!). In that sense I think hedonism is a totally dead end, as a doctrine of say, ethics. But nonetheless - I am specifically interested in the 'downsides' of positive emotional states. Something like a 'toxic happiness' or happiness which stifles rather than expands the possibility of action. Or happiness which mocks, degrades, and incites violence. I'm trying to conceptualize joy as something that cannot be taken along these lines - a positive positivity.

I had a similar intuïtion... interestingly enough if you look at the etymological roots of the words it seems to have been the other way around historically.

Happiness comes from luck (happ), being fortunate, which points more to the material state of a person in relation to the world, rather than a psychological state... something that 'happ'ens to someone.

Joy then seems to have been associated throughout history with an inner feeling, a pleasurable sensation... which would be more in line with 'hedonic'.

Don't know if this necessarily has any bearing on how we use the terms now, maybe it has, but I thought it interesting at least, if only because of the shifts in meaning. — ChatteringMonkey

That's super interesting!

If one is happy in the historical meaning of the word (lucky, fortunate) one would probably be more inclined to turn a blind eye to the injustices of a system that has benefited you more than most. — ChatteringMonkey

Part of what motivated the OP was discussion I had elsewhere, in which I articulated the thought that in an environment that overwhelmingly deadens human flourishing, a sense of joy can almost function as an ethical imperative. Joy as a militant practice. Inspired in part by Audrey Lorde: "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." So this is a kind of motivated joy, one diametrically opposite to happiness as contentment. A joy that specifically cuts against the given, rather than tries to settle amongst it (as with one that would turn a blind eye). I'm mostly trying to think about how to articulate or conceptualize these two notions of happiness and joy.

But nonetheless - I am specifically interested in the 'downsides' of positive emotional states. Something like a 'toxic happiness' or happiness which stifles rather than expands the possibility of action. Or happiness which mocks, degrades, and incites violence. I'm trying to conceptualize joy as something that cannot be taken along these lines - a positive positivity. — StreetlightX

Hmmm. :chin:

Well there are the obvious things that come to mind, say, being happy with the use of a certain drug and maintaining that happiness with continual usage of such substances.

I guess that in the case of happiness which incites violence, you might have in mind something like certain strands of nationalism. Being happy that one belongs to X country as opposed to Y or receiving meaning from being a member of something like the Klan or such groups.

The problem I see in what you're getting at, is that, when is it reasonable to distinguish someone is being "happy" by merely subsisting on bad conditions, such as being fine that you can't get a better job, or being content that one is born to poverty and not wanting to improve such a situation vs. thinking about these cases in terms of being satisfied with what you got?

In these cases, a kind of toxic happiness may be what keeps such people alive.

Part of what motivated the OP was discussion I had elsewhere, in which I articulated the thought that in an environment that overwhelmingly deadens human flourishing, a sense of joy can almost function as an ethical imperative. Joy as a militant practice. Inspired in part by Audrey Lorde: "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." So this is a kind of motivated joy, one diametrically opposite to happiness as contentment. A joy that specifically cuts against the given, rather than tries to settle amongst it (as with one that would turn a blind eye). I'm mostly trying to think about how to articulate or conceptualize these two notions of happiness and joy. — StreetlightX

Yes, I like this idea. I'm tempted to view it in terms of Spinoza's and Nietzsche conception of Joy as the feeling of increase in power. In face of an environment that deadens human flourishing, that is oppressive, you presumably can go a couple of ways. One in which you tell yourself that things aren't that bad, where the 'solution' to the problem is self-deception... to be able to keep going and at the same time avoid doing something about it that may be unpleasant. And the other would be to actually try and do something about the situation, to 'empower' yourself which would feel joyous no matter if you end up having to face unpleasant situations as a result.

So I would view this in terms of empowerment, agency vs narcotic, fatalistic... or what 180proof pointed to with dionysus vs the crucified. In Nietzschian philosophy what the crucified signified was a psychological state where one no longer wants to make any distinctions because of hypersensitivity and aversion to pain, to any sensation that upsets a harmonious blissful state. Dionysus then symbolizes the reverse where one is engaged with the world as is, that is not the dreamed up Apollonian world papered over with concepts, but the world given to us by the senses. Or in terms of aims and action the difference would be that the crucified wants to attain and maintain a psychological state by denying the world (inward focus), while Dionysus experiences joy by effecting the world (outward focus).

I'm kindof repeating what you and 180proof allready said here for the most part... but I feel like it's the first time I really get what he was getting at with this distinction.

I've only read them in English, not in Latin & German, respectively. Both probably use "joy" & "happiness". Why that matters to you I can't fathom. — 180 Proof

I speak several languages and so I can compare. Something that can be a problem in one language isn't necessarily so in another (such as expressing one concept with one word -- e.g. Schadenfreude). Words often don't have 1 to 1 translations. I'm fluent in German and I can find my way around Latin. My native language is a Slavic one, not English.
Well, I guess this is just one more of those things that only multilingual people can relate to. Nevermind.

Joy here is impersonal: it doesn't belong to me, but I partake in it. — StreetlightX

I'm not as interested in those posts that are parsing out the meanings of words in how they are actually used and I'm comfortable with your use of the words "joy" and "happiness" in your idiosyncratic ways in order to draw important distinctions.

So, to take happiness to be an internal state and joy an external state, I'm not sure I agree, but I would draw yet another distinction here between happiness and pleasure, which is a distinction Mill drew. The intellectual pleasures can be considered happiness even if a certain amount of angst flows from living an intellectual life. I think we all find greater happiness in the struggles of meaning than in being a satisfied pig, to paraphrase the quote. So, while happiness might not be pleasurable, happiness is worth striving for. Pleasure I take as immediate state of having your animalistic drives satisfied.

But, back to your distinctions, you use the term "joy" in an objective way, as if there are joys out there in the world to be experienced much like there are trees and art to be enjoyed. Obviously, though, the enjoyment of the joy is entirely a subjective feeling. That means the joy lies in you, not the thing. The carnival might be called a joy, but it might not be a joy to me while it might be a joy to you. So, do we say there is joy out there in any meaningful way?

Does an 'expression of joy' lead to (or come from) emancipatory / transgressive conduct or servile / debased conduct? Is it used for medicine or to poison? Maybe something along those lines ... — 180 Proof

:up:


I'm pretty sure I feel you here.

I may be be wrong ,but it feels like the subtext of what you're talking about is, at root, the joy of being part of a real-life community sharing in something outside of yourself, sharing it with others. But then, as soon as that wouldn't-it-be-nice begins to come in, the spectre of 'but isn't that also how fascism works?' pops up. Not just fascism but any happy group thats happy through communally purging some scapegoat. If that's right, it's also a pattern of thought that I'm afflicted by.

I'm reading Walt Whitman's Song of Myself*, for the first time, and it's mostly pure ecstatic (with all the vibey and etymological resonances of that word), which is how, by osmosis, we all think about Whitman. But - & I didn't expect this - at one point, late in the poem ( & it's a very long poem) he begins to slip into darker territory; at first in his same joyous register, but slowly tending more and more morose and then:

Enough! Enough! Enough!
Some how I have been stunn'd. Stand back!
Give me a little time beyond my cuff'd head, slumbers, dreams
gaping,
I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.

That I could forget the mockers and insults!
That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the
bludgeons and hammers!
That i could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and
bloody crowing!

I remember now — Whitman

A lot follows, and it would be ridiculous to reduce it to any one thing, but a large part of what he does after that [event/trauma/breach] is to imaginatively work through a process of healing, defending, consoling and so forth - and it's all worked out, as is his fashion, in very concrete scenes of such processes taking place (enter the academic register: In this poem he always expresses an emotion or idea by providing a series of tableaux that exemplify it; so, here, he presents a succession of tableaux exemplifying the idea of the active protection and aiding of a convalescent)

Maybe there's something to that - being attuned enough to the joyous whole to share in it, but aware enough to say 'enough!' when it spills over into something sinister. He literally puts the poem on pause to help all the sufferers, before he will resume the joy

(even the antinatalists!


"Down-hearted doubters dull and excluded,
Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, dishearten'd, atheistical,
I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt despair
and unbelief.

[...]
Be at peace bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers,
I take my place among you as much as among
any,
The past is the push of you, me, all, precisely the same,
And what is yet untried and afterward is for you, me, all precisely
the same.

I do not know what is untried and afterward,
But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail.)


I do think that there is a point here where thought really can't have any purchase. There can't be any cognitive guarantee that a given, shared, joy is of the type that can be apodictically condoned - there has to be some intuition or art in figuring out if it's one or the other.

& I do also think happiness and tranquility have their place. There is an element to the encounter-with-the-outside in certain deleuzian strands that reminds me of doing the oregon trail at strenuous-pace-no-rations - a saint might handle it ( or not handle it, and die beautifullly worn-out) but there's something to be said for rejuvenation (to take another video game metaphor - if the world of capitalism is resident evil, you have to avail yourself of the soft music of the safe room, from time to time.)


----

*Song of hisself, yes, but he's clear he means (and the poem bears it out) that his 'self' is the shared experience of a collective

Anyway, @StreetlightX if you do ever, one day, feel a moment of happiness, I hope you can enjoy it and not reflexively search for the right citations to contextualize and justify it. Joy -outside, communal - awaits all those who will partake of it. happiness may be solitary & bourgeois, but academic scruples are even more so. You don't need dead europeans to underwrite a day off.


Just live your life man!

we all shared in the joy of the moment. — StreetlightX

I think phenomenology would put in terms of an experience that is pleasurable results in Joy or happiness. An experience that is unpleasant results in misery or sadness. It is hedonic.

Joy is a little warmer then happiness, imo?