For him the sources of happiness are clear from the abundantly available results of research. There is a polemical cast to Layard's book: he wishes to persuade his readers that public policy should be judged by how successful it is in increasing happiness, and therefore that what society needs is a consensus about the common good, and a shared endeavour to bring it about. The interesting difference between their respective conclusions is one of interpretation. Nettle and he do not disagree about the facts as research reveals them they both take subjective avowals of happiness to represent an objective dimension of human experience. He offers an intuitive definition of happiness as “feeling good”, and brings to bear much of the same research as Nettle to argue that it provides us with definite answers about what makes people happy, and what, therefore, can be done to increase the amount of happiness in society. Richard Layard's Happiness: Lessons From a New Science is premised on a frank acceptance of the utilitarian idea that happiness is not only attainable, but that the aim of private and public policy should be to maximise it. The journey is what matters, though without a destination to navigate towards there cannot be one. Daniel Nettle's excellent survey of the subject-a lucid, intelligent, and thoughtful essay-turns on the idea that happiness serves us best as a goal rather than an achievement, to encourage us to strive.

These two books come to interestingly different conclusions about happiness. Why is it that this suggestion makes us recoil rather than rejoice? For happiness is only a pill away. Would that license the actions of a person whose happiness came from murdering others? Moreover: if the true goal of life is happiness, it could easily be achieved for all by lacing the water supply with a drug that induces happiness. This can easily be seen by asking whether any means to happiness is justified by its attainment. Moreover, reflection has always persuaded some-not least among them the philosophers-that there are higher values in life than happiness. If anything it has fallen, or at best remained the same. Every reliable indicator shows that although people in the west have grown wealthier in the past half-century, the degree to which they claim to be happy has not kept pace. Yet most people say that happiness is their goal in life, and many of these, in turn, believe that they would achieve it if they were rich, or anyway richer. One of the main sources of unhappiness in the world, as more than one sage has pointed out, is the search for happiness.

Advancing women in science, medicine and global health.

The Lancet Regional Health – Western Pacific.

The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology.

What is the pursuit of happiness