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Question of the Month

How Can I Be Happy?

The following answers to this central human question each win a random book.

Pleasure, health, wealth and good personal relationships come readily to mind when characterising happiness. These and other elements may combine to form a state of equilibrious contentment. But happiness springs from a weighted balance between them, rather than, say, endless pleasure or limitless wealth. The Ancients summed this up long ago when Aristotle wrote about ‘the good life’ and propounded his ‘Doctrine of the Mean’, which tells us to take the good middle path between evil or deleterious extremes. Writing before Aristotle, Plato had also warned against the dangers of excess, and although Plato’s later dialogues revisit the place of pleasure, those of his middle period are vigorously anti-hedonistic.

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