By Allen Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall is Associate Dean and Grady Rosier Professor in the Sorrell College of Business at Troy University and Executive Director of the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy. 

Last month, amid the venerable edifices of old London, I attended the conclave of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, an organization that describes itself as “an international movement with a vision for a better world where empowered citizens take responsibility and work together to bring flourishing and prosperity to their families, communities, and nations.” 

While the symposium offered numerous intellectual provocations worthy of extended consideration, one presentation stands out: Arthur Brooks’s disquisition on the nature of human happiness.

With characteristic charisma, Brooks challenged the reductionist modern conception that equates happiness with mere ephemeral emotion—a view that reflects our culture’s increasing tendency toward psychological superficiality. Instead, he advanced a tripartite framework that recognizes happiness as a complex human condition comprising three essential elements.

First, enjoyment—not to be confused with the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure that animates much of contemporary culture. Brooks distinguished between shallow sensory gratification and the profound satisfaction derived from deep interpersonal bonds and experiences imbued with significance.

Second, satisfaction—a sense of accomplishment that follows successfully navigating difficulties and attaining worthy objectives. This element acknowledges the paradoxical human truth that meaningful happiness often requires struggle rather than its absence.

Third, meaning—perhaps the most philosophically profound component, involving a teleological orientation toward purposes that transcend immediate self-interest, anchored in principles sufficiently substantial to warrant dedicated defense.

While acknowledging the genetic lottery’s influence on one’s predisposition toward contentment, Brooks refreshingly emphasized human agency in cultivating wellbeing—a welcome departure from the deterministic narratives that increasingly characterize academic psychology.

For those seeking to construct a genuinely felicitous existence, Brooks prescribed investment in four fundamental domains: faith, with its transcendent framework for human existence; family, that institution that precedes and shapes all others; friendship, providing essential social infrastructure; and meaningful work, which provides both purpose and the satisfaction of contribution.

Our age is characterized by material abundance yet spiritual and psychological impoverishment. Brooks described happiness as something that comes not from the shallow contentment of comfortable citizens but from the profound flourishing resulting from living according to enduring human truths.

Long before Brooks, Aristotle shared similar wisdom in his Nicomachean Ethics. It serves as this month’s “Word to the Wise.” He said, “One day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.” 

This assertion reflects not merely a casual observation but the sophisticated concept of eudaimonia—a term inadequately rendered in contemporary English as “happiness” but more accurately understood as the condition of human flourishing or living well.

The distinction is not merely semantic. It reflects a fundamental philosophical divergence between ancient and modern conceptions of fulfillment. Where contemporary culture often reduces happiness to transient emotional states—ephemeral moments of pleasure or satisfaction—Aristotle’s eudaimonia represents something more substantial: a durable condition of human excellence transcending the inevitable vicissitudes of emotional experience.

This Aristotelian conception acknowledges the natural undulations of human emotion—the peaks and valleys that constitute psychological experience—yet suggests that genuine flourishing persists independently of these fluctuations. It posits contentment not as an emotional state to be achieved but as a condition of being cultivated through virtuous action and contemplation.

As we navigate our era’s obsession with momentary happiness, Aristotle’s ancient wisdom provides a corrective worth contemplating. 

 Note: This piece is adapted from Allen Mendenhall’s regular segment “Word to the Wise” on Troy Public Radio.