Joy’s Relationship to the Good Life

Could joy, then, be a candidate for a one-word definition of the good life, perhaps in the same way some people think happiness is? Indeed, could it be better able to integrate in itself the requisite conditions for our thriving and our responsibility for it? Could the good life be described as the life of joy, as the parable of the talents might be read to suggest? Not quite. Joy is a bit like a crown.

Wearing a crown won’t make you a monarch; a child can wear one, as can a usurper. If you aren’t a monarch already, even if what is set on your head looks like a crown, it isn’t actually a crown. For the crown is a symbol of royal authority. It is similar with joy. Joy isn’t the good life; it is one part of it, the one dependent on the other two. If there is any good, either perceived or actual to rejoice over-no good circumstances or active stances-happy feelings might have may look and feel like joy, but they will not be joy.

As an emotion, joy is always over something (perceived) as good, and it presumes proper relation to some (perceived) good-which means that true joy presumes proper relation to some actual good. At the same time, the crown is not merely external to royal authority. In a crown, royal authority comes to expression; wearing it, a monarch is publicly manifest as monarch. It is similar with joy. Joy is not merely external to the good life, a mint leaf on the cake’s shipped cream. Rather, the good life expresses and manifests itself in joy. Joy is the emotional dimension of life that goes well and that is led well, a positive affective response to life going well and life being led well; all three in their interpenetrating unity, life going well, life being led well, and joy-are the good life.