When Happiness Was Invented

My tradition on this blog is to take a break (mostly!) from current events sometime in mid- August. Instead, I pre-schedule daily posts based on things I read during the previous year about three of my preoccupations: economics, editing/writing, and academia. With the posts pre-scheduled, I can then relax more deeply when floating on my back in a Minnesota lake, staring up at the sky. __________________ Economists often use the term “happiness” synonymously with the term “utility,” which in turn is the basis for a basic economic model that people as best they can (given the cognitive constraints they face) to maximize their own utility. The connection goes back to the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who in one of the less-famous works of 1776 (overshadowed by the Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations), described the foundations of this theory of utilitarianism in “A Fragment on Government.” (Those of you who have read Bentham will be unsurprised that…