Modern day philosophy of health focuses on solving the problem of determining what makes up the concepts of health, illness, and disease. Does someone who is scientifically diseased remain healthy because they remain happy? Does happiness matter? Havi Carel believes it does. I believe it does. In the following essay I will be focusing on the positive features of Carel’s account, that happiness and a good life are possible within the constraints of illness. I will discuss the relevance between Aristotle’s hypothesis on happiness equaling a meaningful life and Lennart Nordenfelt’s view on Holistic Theory of Health.
When we think about the good life, whether within an Aristotelian, liberal or other framework, we often try to spell out the conditions for such a life. These are freedom, health, access to social goods, self-fulfillment and so on. Although health is, of course, taken to be an essential element of the good life and a necessary condition for happiness, a particular issue seems to be insufficiently discussed in such accounts. This is the question: what happens to the good life or to happiness when health is permanently absent? (Carel, 95).
For the ancient greek philosopher Aristotle, happiness was not a feeling but “identical with human activity which fulfilled designated conditions” (Nordenfelt, 1997, p. 83). According to Aristotle, a person’s body, mind, and mental state are synonymous when defining their overall well-being, and if one were what he defined as happy, then no harm could synonymously be done to their well-being. Thus, this person must be supposed healthy and their life meaningful. The prerequisites for a high degree of happiness and health encompass the fact that life is not always good. For if life was always good we would not know bad to compare it to, and therefore no knowledge of what it is that makes something good. Therefore life must have its ups and downs, its illnesses and diseases, and to experience such “bad” things is to know what the good are. The prescription for happiness? “A person is happy if she or he finds existence to be on the whole as she or he wishes it to be,” (Nordenfelt 1997, p. 84).
My grandmother Emily is in the seventh and final stage of Alzheimers: severe cognitive decline. It is at this stage that most bearers will have lost the ability to communicate, loose their psychomotor capabilities, and require assistance with most of their activities. Seeings her brain is currently running on a less than two second memory span, what would be considered her vital goals have significantly changed. It would even seem that she might have already completed all of her vital goals. Emily went to school, became a teacher, she met and fell in love with her husband, got married and began a family, has three happy children, and has lived ninety eight years to enjoy her accomplishment of achieving these goals. So what if someone no longer has any vital goals they wish to reach? What if everything they wanted in life- they got? What if they are happy with everything they had and have, to the extent that their health no longer be judged upon whether or not they are (terminally) ill?
Emily at age forty most likely would not have considered Alzheimers when she’s ninety eight to be the preferable lifestyle, but while we cannot choose most of the things that happen to us in life, we can choose what we make of it. This includes an illness or disease and how we choose to feel about our situation and the deciding factor as to if we will choose to be happy. “I suggest that adaptability and creativity are two common positive responses to illness, demonstrating that health within illness is possible” (Carel, 95).
Most Alzheimer patients battle this disease from four to twenty years, increasingly worsening with each stage. Emily has had Alzheimers for sixteen years now- statistically speaking she should not be as healthy as she is. While her mind has progressed to the final stage, her bodily functions, organs, heart, and happiness have remained unaltered. She laughs just the same amount as she did before diagnosed, if not more, because her mind has now reverted to that of a child that finds almost anything anyone says hilarious. She suffers from no other drastic diseases besides memory loss, and this is much in thanks to happiness. In agreement with Nordenfelt, “nothing prevents ill-health being compatible with an extremely high degree of happiness” (p. 91).
From ancient Greece to modern day philosophy, we as a species have been focused on solving the problem of determining what makes up the concepts of health, illness, and disease. “Illness creates a gap between the biological and lived body. But a second, reconciliatory stage is possible. Happiness and a good life are possible even within the constraints of illness. But their uncovering requires a new set of conceptual tools and a metaphysical framework that gives precedence to the experience of illness and to the embodied nature of human existence” (Carel, 108). I stand by my hypothesis that in regards to health- happiness does matter. My grandmother’s incessant choice to be happy regardless of a disease inhibiting her to remember two seconds past the current moment is what continues to protect her heart and keep her alive. Like Nordenfelt says, “The main thing is that you don’t forget the feeling of happiness.”
Citations
Carel, Havi. “Can I Be Ill and Happy?” Philosophia, 5 July 2007, pp. 95–110., doi:10.1007/s11406-007-9085-5.
Nordenfelt, L., 2006. The concepts of health and illness revisited. Medicine, Health Care and
Preclinical Alzheimer’S Disease To End-Stage Alzheimer’S. [online] Seniorlink.com. Available at: <https://www.seniorlink.com/blog/the-7-stages-of-alzheimers> [Accessed 19 April 2020].
Healthline. 2020. How Being Happy Makes You Healthier. [online] Available at: <https:// www.healthline.com/nutrition/happiness-and-health> [Accessed 19 April 2020].
Nordenfelt, L., 1997. Talking About Health. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 84-92.