Yeah asked:

If you don't know you're unhappy, are you?

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It seems a paradox to say that a person could be unhappy, even though they didn't think that they
were unhappy. Surely happiness is a feeling which you know you have, if you have it, and know you
don't have if you don't have it.

The Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle would not agree with what I have just said. He had a
conception of 'happiness' as more than simply a subjective feeling but rather a judgement that we
make about the quality of a person's life. A man who is being cheated on by his wife is not 'happy'
according to Aristotle's definition, even if he is blissfully unaware of the fact and thinks that he is the
happiest man in the world.

We could argue all day about definitions. You might reply that Aristotle is not talking about 'happiness'
per se, but something else (the Greek word is 'eudaimonia'). The substantial question is what sort of
happiness we should want. Once you accept that the happiness you should want is Aristotle's, rather
than the subjective feeling of happiness, then some important consequences follow, which I leave you
to work out.

There is another dimension to the problem, however. Since Freud, we have got used to the idea that
we are not always aware of how we truly feel. You assert you are happy, and as you utter the words
you seem to believe what you say. Yet deep inside there is a gnawing unhappiness which is causing
you to 'act out' in various ways, spoiling relationships and hurting people. - Freud said that his
objective was to transform a person's neuroses into 'generalized unhappiness'. It sometimes seems
as if he thought that everyone ought to be 'unhappy'.

Geoffrey Klempner