Kara asked:

Is true happiness finding your one true love?

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It is important to realize that different people may mean quite different things by 'true happiness' and
'true love'; such notions are notoriously difficult to pin down, which has led many philosophers to
refuse to talk about them at all. One of my lecturers at Uni once said, "I never use love as an example
because I don't understand it." If you want to answer the question for personal rather than theoretical
reasons, what you decide will depend on what you think true happiness and true love really are.

My answer to the question would be that I do not believe true happiness can possibly consist in
finding your onetrue love, because I do not accept that, for every person born into the world, there is
one person out there — and one person only — who they could truly love, if only they could find
them. I regard love as a much more haphazard business, in which the best meetings often happen by
chance rather than design. The idea that my true love already exists somewhere strikes me as
ridiculously deterministic. It is also a dangerously idealistic notion, setting people up with unrealistic
expectations of their lover, only to be disappointed ("They weren't my true love after all...") On the
other hand, lasting love and affection between two people can bring them very great happiness, and
perhaps you could understand the question as being no more than an expression of this.

To answer the question more fully you could think about some of the following aspects of it:

What is 'true happiness'?

Are there other kinds of happiness that are not 'true'?

Does 'finding' imply you should actively go looking for your one true love?

Does everyone have only onetrue love?

Does everyonehave someone to love?

Does anyonereally have a true love?

What is 'true love'?

Are there other kinds of love?

Do some people have a true love somewhere in the world, but never find them?

How would you know whether this was true?

How would someone know whether they had found their true love, or attained true happiness?

Can you think of an example of someone who has found their one true love?

Katharine Hunt

I find this is an interesting question in several ways. Not the least of which is that it raises several
other questions in response to it rather than definitive answers and this possibly is one of the key
features that distinguishes philosophical questions from other kinds of questions.

One aspect that I find particularly interesting is consideration of whether we can happily pair up 'truth'
and 'value' expressions to form phrases like; 'true happiness' and 'true love' or if in fact by pairing
them we introduce expressions that confuse meaning from one area of thought with another, i.e.
science and mathematics with the complexity and richness of ordinary life and in this way mislead
and take us down confusing byways or possibly to fields of thought as yet to be systematically
explored. 'Truth' and 'false hood' are terms of evaluation that have relatively clear rules for use in
science, mathematics and logic which stems from their association with matters of fact and definition.
A simple definition of truth allows to us to recognise a statement as true if the object to which it
applies exists. 'It is true that there is a pencil on the table providing that there isa pencil on the table
and it is false if there is nota pencil on the table.' We can also assure the checker we have employed
that they will not find anything that could be both a pencil and not a pencil at the same time. It is less
clear how we could apply the terms true and false to happiness and love under the same rules of
meaning.

If I say, it is true that I am in-love or have love-for someone or something we could devise rules by
which my claim could be checked and shown to be true or false under the contemporary meaning of
'love' or 'happiness' but we could not attach the same degree of certainty, finality and well marked out
borders to the object to which our claim applies. We can easily tell the difference between an object
on the table that has all the features of a pencil and those that do not, so that we could tell the person
we are sending in to check our claim about pencils how to tell the difference between objects that are
pencils and objects that are not. It is less easy to give someone a clear set of rules or guidelines for
finding 'object's they would recognise as 'love' or 'happiness' and never be confused about what it is
they have found so that they are never left with the question; is this 'love', 'not-love', some of both or
neither, is this happiness, not-happiness, some of both or neither?</P?

'Love' behaviour and 'happiness' behaviour could be characterised by time, place and role e.g.
current perceptions of 'parental love of children in contemporary Britain' but not so that there is never
any confusion about what it is we are witnessing or experiencing. We can experience and witness
examples of behaviour that we could characterise as both love and not-love, happiness and
not-happiness, many examples of which are produced by the manner in which differences of opinion
or disagreement are expressed. So if we think that phrases like 'true happiness' and 'true love' will
guarantee us freedom from confusion in the same way that we think we can be free from confusion in
science and mathematics, the nature of the 'objects' to which the terms 'true' and 'false' apply applies
guarantees that we will not.

We can of course ask the question without stretching the boundaries of normal meaning 'is this a true
pencil' if, some cunning technologist has come up with bananas that children can write with the same
desirable features that a graphite pencil has for them but with the added advantage for parents of
encouraging them to eat fruit, though I think brussel sprout-pencils would be pushing the bounds of
the possible too far. Similarly, as society and behaviour shifts and changes and we experience the
cycles of gain and loss, loss and gain of both love and happiness we are likely to be forced at some
time in our lives to ask the question' was this true love or true happiness?' when confronted by
experiences or behaviour outside the normal range of our individual or societies knowledge. It is at
this point that the true function of mismatched expressions like 'true love' and 'true happiness' comes
into play as both an indicator of fusion, change and confusion in the production or generation of new
concepts and meanings.

Neil Buckland