What branch(es) of Philosophy considers happiness to be the ultimate purpose of human life?

Question

Is happiness the ultimate purpose of human life? To which philosophical branch belongs this statement? Also the subbranch would be very helpful. Thank you in advance

Answer 1

The answer is ethics or moral philosophy - but with two qualifications.

Ethics/ moral philosophy

The best-known version of a theory that looks to a happiness-oriented purpose of human life is classical utilitarianism, a body of ethical ideas broadly datable from the writings of Jeremy Bentham (1848-1832). He is associated with the phrase, 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number', as defining the moral criterion. (Though this phrase is standardly used to summarse his ethical theory, there is some dispute over whether he originated or even used it.)

Utilitarianism has gone through a variety of developments since Bentham's day but it remains a major ethical theory.

Qualification 1

Although some ethical theories, of which utilitarianism is a star example, consider happiness to be the ultimate purpose of human life, ethics or moral philosophy includes other theories which emphatically do not endorse happiness in this way. While Kant's (1724-1804) ethical theory finds a place for happiness, its main proposal is that human life should be governed by the moral law, to which as rational and free individuals we are to conform our actions. This law, which requires a particular kind of consistency, emboded in the so-called categorical imperative, is only contingently related to happiness - which it certainly does not regard as the ultimate purpose of human life.

Qualiification 2

Then what's the other qualification? It relates to the use of 'happiness' to translate the Ancient Greek term, 'eudaimonia' (εὐδαιμονία). Both Plato and Aristotle regarded 'eudaimonia' as the proper and intrinsic goal of human life but the exact nature of 'eudaimonia' is not caught by our word, 'happiness'. For the Greeks it signified well-being or human flourishing, both of which might be expected to produce happpiness but neither of which is identical with it. 'Eudaimonia' comes close to 'happiness' and many translators still use it to render the term. Best tip: it's perfectly all right to say (for convenience) that 'eudaimonia' means 'happiness' as long as you know that (by the test of historical nuance) it doesn't!

Answer 2

Actually a large trunk of branches of Philosophy deal with happiness as their goals. A famous earliest western school of such thought is Pyrrhonism. Pyrrhonism (borrowed some ideas from Buddhism thousands of years ago) definitely has some shining point in it otherwise such an ancient school of thought would disappear long ago. Because for human the world is nothing but a metaphoric picture, so we cannot know the "ultimate" truth if it exists, as they famously disputed any dogmas held mainly by the Stoics, based on their study of the "problem of criterion".

Generally, most skepticisms' goal is happiness of life, or inward steady-state calmness since human beings cannot understand the NATURE of the world. Such as Pyrrhonists, via their "epoche" techniques, trying to achieve this mind state, similar to many other religious practices. While other similar schools may not advocate this such as Karl Popper's Critical Rationalism, or Scientific Fallibilism.

For me, I don't see any conflict between Stoics and Pyrrhonists as historically they regarded each other as enemies. I personally like Stoicism's emphasis on ethics, which many people overlooked and thought it's not a foundational and important topic in serious philosophy. Since we cannot have the chance to know the ultimate truth, the only thing left for us human beings are just to "describe" the phenomenal "honestly" to oneself and to others from his or her own experience, otherwise it's like put oil onto fire, make everything much harder to manifest itself and thus be useful. Ethics is nothing but to be honest all the time (faithful to everyone all the time), otherwise no philosophy or true knowledge can be really useful to the dishonest, thus unethical person, because dishonesty magically prevents true understanding of truely honest Saint's words or dogmas, only creates ego, disregard, misunderstanding and distortions... But in reality very few people realized this and act accordingly to this dogma...