"Across many centuries and all continents, philosophers have wrestled with a deceptively simple question: 'What makes human life happy?' Aristotle called his version of happiness eudaimonia and said it was achieved through virtue and reason. Epicurus saw happiness as tranquillity ( ataraxia) - a life free from unnecessary pain and full of simple pleasures. Today, we might equate happiness with comfort, success, or even a perfect image on social media."
"These schools debated with, critiqued, and enriched each other in a lively intellectual culture. Together, they revealed not just a single path to happiness, but many diverse and intersecting ones. Some of these schools placed happiness in knowledge, others in detachment, others in ethical action, and others in pleasure or unity; but an underlying theme in all of them was seeing happiness as a union with the 'ultimate'."
Philosophers across centuries and continents have asked what makes human life happy. Ancient thinkers offered varied answers: Aristotle equated happiness (eudaimonia) with virtue and reason; Epicurus associated it with tranquillity (ataraxia), simple pleasures, and absence of unnecessary pain. Modern perceptions often tie happiness to comfort, success, or curated social-media images. From around the sixth century BCE in India, multiple darśanas proposed diverse, intersecting paths to happiness, including knowledge, detachment, ethical action, pleasure, and unity. A common theme across these schools is conceiving happiness as union with an ultimate reality. Nyāya emphasizes rigorous logic and frames happiness as liberating knowledge.
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