Happiness is an achievement brought about by man’s inner productiveness, and not a gift from the gods. Happiness and joy are not the satisfaction of a need springing from a physiological or a psychological lack; they are not the relief from tensions but the accompaniment of all productive activity, in thought and feeling, and action.

Happiness is an indication that man has found the answer to the problem of human existence: the productive realization of his potentialities and thus, simultaneously, being one with the world and preserving the integrity of his self. In spending his energy productively he increases his powers and “burns without being consumed.”

Happiness is the criterion of excellence in the art of living, of virtue in the meaning it has in humanistic ethics. Happiness is often considered the logical opposite of grief and pain. Physical or mental suffering is part of human existence and to experience them is unavoidable. To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excluded the ability to experience happiness. The opposite of happiness thus is not grief or pain but depression, which results from inner sterility and unproductiveness.

Happiness is proof of partial or total success in the “art of living.” Happiness is man’s greatest achievement; it is the response of his total personality to a productive orientation toward himself and the world outside. Humanistic ethics may very well postulate happiness and joy as its chief virtues, but in doing so it does not demand the easiest but the most difficult task of man, the full development of his productiveness.

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