Abstract

Both in clinical settings and in bioethical arguments, “happiness” is not a commonly cited concept. The reason seems to be, first, its meaning is too wide and ambiguous, and the second is that the concept of happiness in medicine or bioethics can be substituted by QOL which was introduced into medical practices as an objective and measurable concept and is very useful for medical staff to judge how to treat a patient. There are two kinds of health-related QOL: comprehensive QOL and disease-specific QOL. However, recently, researchers have tried to devise a scale of happiness in several ways. Roughly speaking, the subjective happiness scale can be built into comprehensive health-related QOL, but it is difficult to find the counterpart of disease-specific QOL in the field of happiness. Virtue based happiness is quite difficult to be translated or built into QOL. Virtue based happiness is long-term happiness and realized by a man of virtue. Modern medical care, following individualistic liberalism, has the principle of respect for autonomy of a patient, the basis of which is the right to the pursuit of happiness which is dependent on patient’s feelings. Regarding subjective happiness, most of its role is now covered by QOL. Then what, if any, is the role peculiar to the concept of happiness in medicine or bioethics? There seems to be at least two places where the concept of happiness can play an important role. The first is regarding the “enhancement problem”, and the other is happiness of the medical staff instead of the patient.