On Sophistry and the Definition of Happiness: A Rejoinder to Mr William Frerking

Extract

In a recent article in New Blackfriars, Mr William Frerking took me to task for some comments which I made on the famous question which Glaucon poses to Socrates in The Republic. He said a number of wise and sensible things. But none of these had any bearing on my argument. I must first assure Mr Frerking that I do not have the strange conception of happiness which he seems to attribute to me; and then try to show that such a view of happiness is by no means implied by what I wrote in my article.

Mr Frerking expresses surprise that nowhere in my article do I offer a definition of happiness. There are two reasons for this: first, that I do not think that the term ‘happiness’ is susceptible of exact definition; and second, that my conception of happiness, unlike that attributable (at least on one interpretation, as we shall see) to Mr Frerking, is just the same as that which is ordinarily current. Still, misunderstanding has evidently arisen; so it may be as well for me to try to spell out roughly what I, and I believe most other people, mean by happiness. Happiness, as Aristotle rightly suggests, is a state one seeks for its own sake, and not as a means to some other state.