Knightian Unhappiness

I first ran into this question decades ago when I was reading a collection of Voltaire. “The Good Brahmin” tells the story of a learned intellectual in India who is absolutely miserable; nothing in all his learning has brought him joy and he is miserable at the thought of not knowing the secret of happiness. The story then tells of a poor old woman who was supremely happy as long as she could bathe in the waters of the Ganges. Voltaire notes he asked all of his friends whether they would prefer to be the miserable Brahmin or the happy old lady. Every single person chose the Brahmin. ‘Tis better to know than to be happy.

That seems like the wrong answer. Surely happiness is better than knowledge. But, I too would rather know than be happy.

I was reminded of this essay in a conversation with a student about The Bluest Eye. In that novel the girl with zero prospects in life ends up insane, but happy. The student claimed the book had a happy ending. I was, to put it mildly, incredulous. Surely having the little girl end up insane was a tragedy. Obviously, right?

But, this student insisted, what better ending was possible for her? Short of an absurd deus ex machina, there was no possible happy ending for this little girl. At least being insane, she was happy. So, the novel ends on a happy note because the best possible thing happened and the little girl is, after all, happy. Would I prefer she was knowledgeable and miserable? Would that be a happier ending?

I didn’t have a decent answer. Well, truth be told, I didn’t have an answer at all. It’s my Voltaire problem—I say being happy is important, but I would pick knowledge over happiness even if the knowledge made me unhappy. The little girl is certainly happier than she would be if she had stayed sane, but even still, her insanity does not strike me as an occasion for celebration.

Since I have been pondering this problem for three decades, it is not really all that surprising that it didn’t get solved by a conversation with a student about Toni Morrison.

What was as surprise was Frank Knight.

I was going to a conference on Knight, which required me to read a decent chunk of his writings. Don’t feel bad that you have never heard of Frank Knight; unless you have had a very unusual education, there is no reason his name would have ever shown up on your reading list.

Knight was an economist at the University of Chicago in the mid-20^th century. His primary contribution to economic thought was the idea of Knightian Uncertainty. You don’t know what will happen in the future. Sometimes you have an idea about the probability of possible future outcomes. If you don’t even know the probability of possible outcomes, then you have Knightian Uncertainty. Like I said, that is his most important contribution to knowledge and you are thinking, “Uh, it is obvious that sometimes people don’t know the probability of future events; how did he get the idea named after him?”

But, it is not Knightian Uncertainty which is relevant here. Instead, in the midst of an essay about Ethics and Economics, Knight considered the idea that we all want to be happy. Obviously coming upon this passage shortly after the conversation with my student, I was suddenly quite alert.

This argument of economists and other pragmatists that men work and think to get themselves out of trouble is at least half an inversion of the facts. The things we work for are “annoyers” as often as “satisfiers”; we spend as much ingenuity in getting into trouble as in getting out, and in any case enough to keep in effectively.

Well, then I started to go back into my lull. Saying things I want to do are “annoyers” seems like just a verbal trick. Nothing to see here…but then Knight goes on

It is our nature to “travel afar to seek disquietude,” and “’tis distance lends enchantment to the view.” It cannot be maintained that civilization itself makes men “happier” than they are in savagery. The purpose of education is certainly not to make anyone happy; its aim is rather to raise problems rather than solve them; the association of sadness and wisdom is proverbial, and the most famous of wise men observed that “in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” Thus the pursuit of the “higher things” and the crasser indulgences are alike failures if the test is happiness.

Oh my. The pursuit of higher things…all those Great Books…is a miserable failure if the test is happiness. Knight continues:

But the test is not happiness. And by this we do not mean that it ought not to be but the simple fact that that is not what men want. It is a stock and conclusive objection to utopias that men simply will not live in a world where everything runs smoothly and life is free from care. We all recall William James’ relief at getting away from Chatauqua. A man who has nothing worry about immediately busies himself in creating something, gets into some absorbing game, falls in love, prepares to conquer some enemy or hunt lions or the North Pole or what not. We recall also the case of Faust, that the Devil himself could not invent escapades and adventures fast enough to give his soul one moment’s peace. So he died, seeking and striving, and the Angel pronounced him thereby “saved”…

Can this possibly be right? If you found yourself happy, would you really immediately invent a problem just to give yourself a better life than the one of being happy? If you lived in Eden, would you eat the fruit just to get out of the place?

The pleasure philosophy is a false theory of life; there abide pain, grief and boredom: these three; and the greatest of these is boredom.

Would we all really prefer pain and grief to the boredom of happiness? I want to say the answer is obviously not….but….but….well…

I can rescue all this by simply asserting that I derive happiness from my futile struggle to read (and read again) every book worth reading. The problem is easily solved by simply asserting the happiness is your goal by definition, so whatever you do is by definition aimed at bringing you happiness. So, creating problems for myself, striving to be better, learning new things do indeed bring me pleasure.

However, no matter how much I try to define things this way, the problem still remains. I know that while I would like to finish the collected works of Wodehouse, while I enjoy steadily plugging away at this, I will not be happy when I finally do so. After all, as soon as Wodehouse is done, the collected works of Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott beckon. The more I read, the more I discover I want to read. So does the continual striving after an unattainable goal make me happy? Why? Shouldn’t reaching the goal make me happy?

Would I prefer to be insane and happy? Not in the least. Is Knight correct that we do not want to be happy? I don’t think that is right, but I cannot figure out where he is in error.