The science of happiness - championed by Richard Layard (pdf) and others - has achieved much, not least putting wellbeing on the agenda. But it is already showing signs of reaching its limits. Why? Because it has sidelined or ignored the great insight of the philosophers of happiness. As John Stuart Mill put it: happiness is only achieved when it is not a direct end. Mill himself found lasting happiness not by pursuing it but in friendship. However, it would be a mistake to think that wellbeing might be boosted just by promoting friendship. For like happiness, friendship too is found indirectly.
The basic problem is that, to date, the science has tended to treat life as simpler than it is. For example, if happiness is defined as positive emotional states, that is pleasure, it excludes the happiness that can only be obtained with pain. In fact, since the sources of the most profound kinds of happiness require us to deal with other people, to say nothing of ourselves, it seems highly likely that happiness is inseparable from suffering - or at least the potential for suffering.
This suggests why friendship is such a critical issue. And as with happiness, the point is not that science has nothing to tell us about friendship. For example, according to research from the Mental Health Foundation, two-thirds of people with mental health problems reported that it helped to have friends around, and one in three commented that they received more help from their friends than their GP or family. Alternatively, when it comes to people's working lives, there is clear evidence that pressures at work put unwelcome strains on friendship.
The 2007 British Social Attitudes survey found that 77% of women in full-time work and 67% of men in full-time work would like to be able to spend more time with friends. These figures were much worse than those in 1989, when only 62% of women and 49% of men said so. And this is after 10 years of businesses trumpeting the so-called work/life balance.
These are interesting results. However, in order to address the underlying problems, we need to ask better questions about friendship. Which is to say that we need to draw on resources wider than science alone.
Consider one of the dominant models for understanding friendship today, namely neo-Darwinism. The big breakthrough came with the application of game theory to friendship, particularly in the shape of the famous prisoner's dilemma. Without rehearsing all the permutations, it turns out that fidelity between prisoners is rewarded in some versions of the game. This led to the conclusion that so-called "reciprocal altruism" can emerge from self-interest; the implication is that friendship is adaptively advantageous, for all that the presumably risky lives of our ancestor hunter-gatherers would suggest otherwise. The same result is supported in games of tit-for-tat too.
The claim is that neo-Darwinism represents an advance in the understanding of friendship on two counts. First, it appears to identify something of friendship's origins. Second, although these origins of friendship seem slightly tainted by being based upon self-interest, it is argued that at least it produces the result that friendship is a natural state of existence. In a world often presumed to be driven by naked self-interest, this is a morally advantageous point to be able to make.
However, on both counts - origins and virtue - an evolutionary understanding of friendship still faces a substantial mountain to climb. First consider the account of the origins of friendship. The issue here is whether the theory of reciprocal altruism is really science or rather merely informed speculation. The difficulty is one with which evolutionary theorists are familiar: we cannot wind the evolutionary clock back to observe, say, communities of early hunter-gatherers. Conceding this point, the evolutionists offer further reasons why they should be believed. First, it is claimed that their theory is simple. And second, it is a simple theory that explains much about what we observe of friendship in the real world. But is simplicity really such an advantage when it comes to understanding a phenomenon like friendship? This is where some philosophy helps.
Aristotle was one of the first to try to make some sense of the vast range of relationships that we call friendship, and argued that it comes in three basic guises. First is what he called utility friendship - the friendliness that forms because of something done together, like work. Second is pleasurable friendship - the friendliness that forms because of something enjoyed together, like shopping. It could be argued that these sorts of friendship appear to be based upon something rather like reciprocal altruism: we are friendly at work because cooperating in the office is mutually beneficial in terms of getting things done; we like to shop with friends because it is mutually beneficial in terms of increasing the pleasure.
But even given that, what of Aristotle's third type of friendship? This he called excellent friendship: the love of another person based on who they are in themselves. This kind of friendship distinguishes itself because, although benefits may be given or received, it is not instrumental and explicitly does not depend upon its utility. Indeed, if such a friend senses that they are being used, it actually undermines the friendship.
Evolutionists reply to this by saying that excellent friendship grows from the bottom up; it is an unexpected consequence of reciprocal altruism. But this is not a causal explanation, and it gets friendship the wrong way round. For excellent friendship is, in fact, the quintessential sort of friendship: it is only because such non-instrumental friendship exists that we are friendly in other types of, otherwise, merely advantageous relationships. It puts the "altruism" into "reciprocal".
What about the virtue of the Darwinian accounts of friendship - the idea that at least it moderates a dominant ideology of self-interest by theoretically showing why it is good to cooperate? The problem here is that it requires friendship to be viewed in terms of a cost-benefit analysis. This undermines friendship at two levels. First, it encourages people to think about friendship in terms of what each individual gets out of it. And as Aristotle said: "Friends do not put the scales centre-stage." The minute they do, they feel used. Second, it sidelines the quintessential and most humanly valuable type of friendship, the excellent, non-instrumental sort.
So what does this say about how should we proceed with the science of wellbeing? In short, turn to the philosophical tradition. It will help science to ask better questions and understand its limits, to say nothing of providing rich resources for the, indirect, pursuit of happiness and friendship.
