Can Happiness Be Taught?

When the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M) announced its collaboration with the Rekhi Foundation for Happiness to establish the Rekhi Centre of Excellence for the Science of Happiness, the news invited both curiosity and contemplation.

- JOHN J KENNEDY

The centre, housed within the department of management studies, aims to blend scientific research with philosophical inquiry to help students cultivate positivity, build emotional resilience, and lead purposeful lives. While this initiative is certainly promising, it raises a set of profound questions.

Can happiness be taught? Can people truly learn to be happy?

These questions are hardly new. Philosophers, theologians, and, more recently, psychologists and neuroscientists have grappled with the nature of happiness. What makes the IIT-M initiative remarkable is its attempt to institutionalise happiness as a subject worthy of structured academic inquiry and practical intervention. Yet, in doing so, it invites scrutiny of not just happiness itself, but of the deeper social, cultural, economic, and psychological frameworks that influence its pursuit.

At the centre lies the question: what is happiness? Is it a transient emotion, a stable personality trait, or the cumulative result of a life well-lived? Classical thinkers offered divergent perspectives. Aristotle defined happiness as eudaimonia, a flourishing life of virtue and purpose. John Stuart Mill, shaped by the utilitarian tradition, equated it with maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. Indian philosophical traditions, on the other hand, emphasized that happiness lies beyond material acquisitions. The Bhagavad Gita extols action without attachment as the path to peace, while Buddhism suggests that the cessation of craving is essential to contentment.