Morality and Happiness. Literature & Language. Research Paper.

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Morality and Happiness
Happiness is deemed by many to be a “folk concept” that is tackled by historians, philosophers, and scholars. Morality, on the same vein, has also been given much attention by the same groups of people. The relationship between morality and happiness is a complex one and should be subjected to further studies. According to Walker and Kavedzija (2), happiness is often purported to be how a person feels at a particular moment in time or in relation to the entirety of life; it is seen as ‘feeling good’ and denotes that there is a dominance of a positive affect over a negative affect. Philipps et al. (166) have stated that happiness should be directly evaluated by the person in question. According to the authors (166, para. 2), “one cannot decide whether or not someone is happy with only descriptive information about the psychological states that person experiences.” Phillips et al. (167) stated that there are three models of happiness, and all of these contain a “moral evaluation of agent’s life.” It is interesting to note that happiness and morality are tied in these scenarios and that morality is essential to happiness.
Kant argues that people have a duty to morally perfect themselves as well as to promote the happiness of others (Roth 1373). Kant also argues that self-love is important for promoting happiness and that this is tied to morality by the act of perfecting one’s self morally as an act of self-love. However, Roth (1375) states that “When people give in to the inclination to comply with the principle of self-love instead of the moral law, their will is, for Kant, frail.” Self-love figures not only in happiness, but in morality as well. As a philosopher, Kant was convinced that promoting morality is also promoting happiness. This is true for the Kantian ethics that call for duty and sense of law. When people are being morally correct, they are promoting not only happiness for themselves, but for others as well (Roth 1375).
Kahn (199) states that, in Kantian ethics, there is a general duty to promote one’s own happiness. Kant often defines happiness by virtue of inclinations. For example, in his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant wrote that “happiness is the satisfaction of all our inclinations” (Kahn 201). However, in some accounts, Kant refers to happiness as well-being, and this is substantially different. Well-being is not based in desire, unlike inclinations, and this is where the relationship between morality and happiness can be found (Kahn 202). Morality, for Kant, is instrumental for happiness. He states that moral happiness is to be found in the consciousness of progress in the good (Kahn 206). Here, Phillips et al. (166) states that each model of happiness that were put forth shows that people who are moral are more likely to report being happy. Happiness as a subjective state is emphasized here, since people cannot be objectively evaluated for happiness (Phillips et al. 167).
Phillips et al. (166) also stated that evaluating happiness morally requires understanding what it means for people to be happy. That is, at the root of the last model proposed ...