Amitai Etzioni’s Critique of Happiness

Excerpt

Amitai Etzioni’s excellent article raises many important questions, some of which have not been fully addressed in the increasingly extensive literature on happiness. This is particularly problematic in the non-academic literature, which tends to focus on the question of “what makes people happy?” without a good definition of happiness, which is a term that can mean many different things. In contrast, there is much more clarity in the new “science” of well-being measurement, which has gone far in terms of defining subjective well-being (the overarching term which encompasses happiness) in its many dimensions. Some of these dimensions are more relevant to public policy than others - a point that is at the heart of Etzioni’s critique and my response. …