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Gross National Happiness: APhilosophical AppraisalThaddeus MetzPublished online: 17 Jul 2014.

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Gross National Happiness:A Philosophical Appraisal

Thaddeus Metz

For more than 40 years, the Kingdom of Bhutan has eschewed evaluating itssocio-economic status in terms of Gross Domestic Product and has instead doneso under the heading of ‘Gross National Happiness’ (GNH). As part of theupswing in international interest in well-being as the proper final end ofdevelopment, it would be apt to critically explore the approach that has been inuse for several decades. In this article, I expound the central elements of GNHand discuss their strengths and weaknesses from a moral-philosophical perspect-ive. I conclude that while GNH covers some blind spots missed by influentialWestern indices with which readers are likely to be more familiar, the latter,along with Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach, also have corrections tooffer the former, inviting a fascinating cross-cultural exchange about how tounderstand the nature of well-being for purposes of public policy.

Keywords: Bhutan; Development; Ethics; Gross National Happiness; PublicPolicy; Welfarism; Well-being

Big Change from a Small Place

For more than 40 years, the Kingdom of Bhutan, a tiny country of about 700,000people situated at the eastern end of the Himalayas between India and China,has eschewed evaluating its socio-economic status in terms of Gross DomesticProduct (GDP) and has instead done so under the heading of ‘Gross NationalHappiness’ (GNH). That is, Bhutan has measured its progress not in terms ofeconomic growth or monetary wealth, as is standard in the West, but rather interms of happiness, roughly understood as a good life. As part of the upswing ininternational interest in well-being as the proper final end of development, itwould be apt for theorists and activists to become familiar with, as well as toevaluate, the approach that has been in use for several decades.

Thaddeus Metz is Humanities Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Johannesburg. Hehas published more than 100 scholarly works on a variety of topics in moral, political and legalphilosophy, but is most known for his research on what makes a life meaningful and how to interpretAfrican ethics. His book, Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study, appeared with Oxford University Press in2013. Correspondence to: Thaddeus Metz, Philosophy Department, University of Johannesburg, B-602APK, POB 524, Auckland Park 2006, South Africa; Email: tmetz@uj.ac.za

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

Ethics and Social Welfare, 2014Vol. 8, No. 3, 218–232, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17496535.2014.932420

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In this article, I expound the central elements of GNH and critically discusstheir strengths and weaknesses from a moral-philosophical perspective. Whatdoes Bhutan mean by ‘happiness’, and to what extent is this conceptiongenerally applicable, given its roots in a Buddhist tradition? What mightmeasurements of well-being used by, say, the United Nations DevelopmentProgramme (UNDP) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation andDevelopment (OECD) be missing in light of GNH? How does GNH compare tosalient theoretical insights into development in the English-speaking literature,and, in particular, how does it weigh up against Martha Nussbaum’s influentialCapabilities Approach? What, if anything, should be added to Bhutan’s concep-tion of happiness in order to provide a more complete picture of what agovernment should pursue for the sake of its citizens’ well-being? These are themain questions that I answer here.

The reader will note that these questions focus on GNH’s conception ofhappiness as the appropriate final aim of development. Although I do indicatehow data are collected and indices are constructed, I do not evaluate whetherthe methods involved are scientifically sound or fully capture what is intended(i.e. are ‘fit for purpose’, in the policy-speak these days). In addition, I do notthoroughly appraise the ways that Bhutan elects to respond to the informationit collects about people’s happiness. Finally, I do not systematically take upliberal and additional theoretical approaches that reject well-being as a (letalone the) proper final end of government action. Instead, my focus in thisarticle is about the respects in which Bhutan is plausibly striving for the rightgoals, supposing that some kind of commitment to welfarist public policy isappropriate.

I begin by sketching the basics of GNH, which include nine domains, 33indicators and 124 variables. Then, I highlight some of the interesting and uniquefeatures of GNH with which particularly Western readers should grapple, such asits spiritual, moral, aesthetic and non-anthropocentric facets, which othersalient welfarist indices downplay. I next compare and contrast GNH with theseand other approaches such as Nussbaum’s, bringing out prima facie weaknesses init. I conclude by summing up what development theorists and related scholarsand practitioners should plausibly take away from Bhutan’s project, as well aswhat the latter should consider taking on board, at least in order to be morecompelling to them. However, I also point to some limits of seeking commonground between different regions of the world as the only approach toformulating public policy; even supposing moral relativism is false, there canbe good reasons for different countries to employ local standards, at least asenquiry into development currently stands.

What is Gross National Happiness?

Bhutan has been measuring its development in terms of happiness since 1972,and so it is not surprising that its approach has undergone some changes between

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then and now. In the following, I focus on the latest version of GNH, particularlyas expounded by Dasho Karma Ura, who is the former President of The Centre forBhutan Studies, Professor Sabine Alkire and others in documents recentlypublished by this government-sponsored think tank (Ura et al. 2012a, 2012b).

Like typical Western understandings of happiness, the Bhutanese consider it tobe a condition that is good for its own sake, and not valuable merely as a meansin the way that money and technology are (see Alkire 2013, esp. 7–8). However,unlike the former in at least economic contexts, ‘happiness’ for Bhutan hassignified something that is neither monistic nor purely subjective. The word isnot meant to pick out, say, pleasant experiences, fulfilled desires or met demandalone. Instead of referring to Anglo-American understandings of utility, theBhutanese use ‘happiness’ to pick out a pluralistic and largely objectiveconception of an intrinsically desirable life.

For instance, earlier versions of GNH were grounded on an idea of ‘four pillars’of happiness, namely, equitable socio-economic development, environmentalconservation, culture and good governance.1 In the most up to date character-izations of GNH, these four elements have been incorporated into what arereferred to as the foundational elements of the ‘nine domains’. These apparentlyirreducible elements of a good life, in catchwords, are: psychological well-being,living standards, health, education, culture, time use, good governance,community and ecology (Ura et al. 2012a, 13–40). From the perspective ofGNH, roughly, a person is more happy, the more that she excels in these ninedimensions of life.2

Each of the nine domains is broken down into two to four markers for a total ofwhat are called the ‘33 indicators’. Something counts as an indicator insofar as ithelps to signify whether sufficiency has been achieved in a given domain (Ura etal. 2012a, 8–11). It appears that something is often deemed to be an indicatorinsofar as it is itself partially constitutive of happiness. Again, something istypically taken to track well-being to some degree because it composes well-being, in part. I do not recount all the indicators, but here sketch representativeones to give the reader a firm enough grasp of how each of the nine domains isunderstood.

Briefly, then, when it comes to psychological well-being, the focus is on notonly a person’s emotional states and assessment of her life, but also herspirituality (analyzed in some detail below). An interest in living standards is afunction of income, housing and assets such as appliances and beasts of burden.

1. See, for example, GNH Commission (2008, 16–17).

2. It would be interesting to determine whether the nine domains can be reduced to a single property,other than the abstract category of happiness, quality of life or well-being. Although those advocatingGNH recurrently note that its conception of happiness is multi-dimensional and not monistic, it isworth considering whether the key domains are ultimately different instances of a single objectivefeature. Two promising candidates, meriting in-depth exploration elsewhere, are states of virtue andcommunal relationships. Some have maintained, implausibly in my view, that GNH’s conception ofhappiness is ultimately a subjective matter of ‘how much the person likes the life he/she leads’(Veenhoven 2004, 295).

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Health is not just the absence of disability and the presence of a functional body,but also includes the absence of depression and anxiety and the presence ofconfidence and the ability to concentrate. ‘Typically, an individual is said to bewell only if both heat-pain is absent from the body and sorrow is absent from themind’ (Ura et al. 2012a, 16). Education goes beyond literary and formal schoolingto also include an awareness of Bhutanese culture and law as well as anappreciation of certain moral values. With respect to culture, there is focus onthe extent to which people have mastered arts and crafts, participated infestivals and similar kinds of events, and accorded with norms governing formalevents relating to dress and etiquette. By ‘time use’ the Bhutanese mean abalance between salaried employment, unpaid labour, leisure time and sleep.Issues of good governance in the first instance concern access to services such aswater and electricity and the ability to participate politically. Community is afunction of the extent to which there is an absence of other-regarding crime, onthe one hand, and the presence of a sense of belonging, relationships of trust,charity work and close-knit families, on the other. Finally, regarding ecology,Bhutan is concerned to maintain biodiversity and, as per its Constitution, toprevent ‘all forms of ecological degradation including noise, visual and physicalpollution’ (Kingdom of Bhutan 2008, art. 5, para. 1). The environmentaldimension hence ranges from engaging in eco-friendly behaviour to encounteringgreen spaces when in a city.

In order to gauge the extent to which various kinds of people are flourishing ineach of the nine domains, people are mostly surveyed, questioned in light of 124variables concerning their lives, including facts such as their age, gender, maritalstatus, location, occupation, hobbies and so on. Although a large majority of thehappiness index is composed in light of self-reporting, this of course does notmean that happiness is something subjective for GNH. Happiness is not therebyreduced to a matter of satisfaction. Instead, people are often asked aboutobjective features of their lives, with questions such as how many hours a daythey sleep, how many social events they have attended and whether theywill vote.

Once people’s input has been obtained, the measurement begins. Basically, aperson counts as happy with respect to GNH if she is sufficiently happy in enoughof the 33 indicators, which are weighted more or less equally.3 Notice that thereare two thresholds here.

First, to be considered happy, one need not excel along all 33 indicators oreven the nine domains that they comprise. Recognizing that people sensibly havedifferent interests and that it is probably unreasonable to expect them toflourish in every possible respect, GNH deems happy those who cover a sufficientrange of ways to live well. So, for example, even if one were not doing that wellwhen it comes to living standards, one could in principle still be happy on

3. Though a bit more weight is given to indicators that do not rely so heavily on self-reporting andinstead admit of independent and accurate measurements of real properties, on which see Ura et al.(2012a, 41).

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balance, if one were doing pretty well with respect to health, education,community and time use. Second, with respect to a given one of the nine ways tolive well, people need not ‘max out’, and instead count as happy if they aredoing well enough. What counts as doing well enough for a certain domain varies.Sometimes GNH uses international standards, e.g. for overcrowding in a house,while other times it invokes national standards, so that a sufficient income isdeemed to be 1.5 times the poverty line in Bhutan (Ura et al. 2012a, 43). Andstill other times there have not been extant standards, in which case thosegenerating the index have appealed to their own normative judgment as well asto consultations with the public (Ura et al. 2012a, 43).

GNH deems people to be ‘happy’ on balance if they have achieved sufficiencyin at least two-third of the indicators, and ‘deeply’ happy if they have done so in77% of them (Ura et al. 2012a, 43–44). Those who are not happy include thosewho are either downright ‘unhappy’, achieving sufficiency in fewer than half ofthe indicators, or ‘narrowly’ happy, having achieved sufficiency in more than halfbut fewer than two-thirds of them.4

The information collected enables policy makers to make a wide array ofjudgments about who is happy and to what degree, taking into account a myriadof variables. For a few examples, according to Bhutan’s official website for GNH,the following have been established5:

. Men are happier than women on average.

. In urban areas, 50% of people are happy; in rural areas it is 37%.

. Unmarried people and young people are among the happiest.

. The happiest people by occupation include civil servants and monks.

. The unemployed are happier than corporate employees, housewives andfarmers.

In response to such data, Bhutan’s government has tended to focus on the not-yet-happy, doing what it can to make them happy, or at least to increase thenumber of domains in which the not-yet-happy achieve sufficiency (Ura et al.2012a, 65). It has therefore been more ‘prioritarian’ than ‘consequentialist’, touse the jargon of analytical political philosophy. That is, the government hasgiven priority to the worst off when it comes to distributing resources, even ifmore happiness in the aggregate would have been promoted by distributing themto those already happy. In this respect, Bhutan’s reaction to GNH has been akinto John Rawls’ difference principle (1999, 52–73) regarding the ‘combinatorial

4. The final, cumulative index itself is somewhat more complicated than this, being a combinedmeasurement of ‘headcount’ and ‘intensity’, roughly, how many people have achieved sufficiency inat least six of the nine domains and how many domains in which the not-yet-happy have achievedsufficiency (Ura et al. 2012a, 46–9).5. For these and additional results, see The Centre for Bhutan Studies and GNH Research (2013); Uraet al. (2012a, 51–64, 2012b, 39–53).

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function’ of justice (to use the phrase from Sen 1990), i.e. the way to distributethe relevant goods.6

In the following, I focus not so much on the way that Bhutan has used the datathat GNH provides, and more on GNH itself. Does it capture all and only theinformation relevant for formulating public policy, at least of a sort that seeks toimprove citizens’ quality of life?

What Makes GNH Different and Appealing

In evaluating the GNH Index with regard to its conception of happiness as a finalend, and setting aside the respects in which it is used by Bhutan’s government, inthis section I address four features of it. They are factors that are not salient inother, particularly Western indices of well-being, but that the latter should takeseriously with an eye towards potential revisions.

I start by considering the way that GNH construes psychological well-being,which includes spirituality (alongside the more usual suspects of life satisfactionand emotional balance). This is no extraneous feature, for ‘in essence GNH isbased on balancing material wants with spiritual needs’ (Ura et al. 2012b, 132).As Bhutan’s Minister of Home and Cultural Affairs has remarked:

GNH stands for the holistic needs of the human individual - both physical andmental well being. It reasons that while material development measurescontribute, undeniably, to enhancing physical well-being, the state of mindwhich is perhaps, more important than the body, is not conditioned by materialcircumstances alone. (Thinley 2005)

Such a view is characteristic of the Buddhist tradition that is dominant among theBhutanese. Recall that, for most adherents to Buddhism, one’s fundamental aimin life should be to strive for enlightenment (nirvana), which is a state in whichthe cycle of rebirth (karma) is ended and one’s soul is freed from attachment tothe physical world.7

There are some facets of what ‘spirituality’ means in GNH that are notessentially grounded on Buddhism. In fact, in one major respect, spirituality isleft undefined, such that respondents are simply asked about the extent to whichthey are spiritual, however they elect to construe that.

However, with regard to the other questions about spirituality, GNH doesspecify its nature, and in ways that are indebted to Buddhism, though notnarrowly so. First, GNH includes a clearly religious dimension that manyagnostics and atheists would have difficulty appreciating, insofar as it askspeople about the extent to which they pray. Although Buddhism is not standardlyunderstood to refer to deities, the Buddha himself is deemed to be a sage who

6. As opposed to the nature of the goods themselves or ‘focal features’ of justice (Sen 1990), whichfor Rawls and many other liberals should not be happiness or some other condition considered goodfor its own sake; for Rawls, only instrumental values, and specifically means that are generally usefulfor achieving ends (‘social primary goods’), are what the state should regulate (1999, 78–86).7. For more on Buddhism and the way it has informed GNH, see Lokamitra (2004); Tashi (2004).

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continues to live in a spiritual realm. Second, spirituality includes mindfulnesspractices, particularly meditation, which in the Buddhist tradition is consideredto be a way to avoid seeking delight in, and satisfaction from, the physical world.Third, people are asked about the extent to which they consider karma whenmaking decisions. In the Buddhist tradition, karma is wrong or base behaviourthat is expected to negatively affect the state of one’s reincarnated soul,although in GNH it is defined much more broadly to mean consideration of‘behavioral cause and effect’ (Ura et al. 2012a, 16n10).

Should states other than Bhutan, and particularly those without a Buddhisttradition, include some of these elements in their account of happiness as a properfinal end of public policy? Some friends of GNH would cite scientific studies andanecdotal evidence indicating that prayer and meditation produce desirable bio-psychological states and reduce unwelcome ones. Perhaps meditation can also‘bring a core stability and silence, which neither wealth nor penury can rock’ (Alkire2013, 49).While such considerationswould not provide reason to considermediationand related practices to be constitutive of well- being, i.e. to be good for their ownsake, if they reliably brought about (mental) health to a substantial degree, and ifthey were easily measured, then it would make sense to deem them ‘indicators’ ofwell-being all the same and to do so regardless of commitments to Buddhism.

In addition, a broad sense of ‘karma’ is plausibly relevant to the sort of stateof mind that many governments should want to instil in their citizens. For one,considering the effects of one’s actions for one’s own long-term well-being is ofclear use to citizens; prudence generally counsels considering the consequencesof one’s actions with respect to oneself down the road. For another, consideringthem with respect to others’ good is probably something both desirable in itselfas a moral virtue and valuable as a means when democratically formulating laws.The more one acts consequent to reflection about how one’s behaviour is likelyto affect other people (and animals), the better a human being one is, and thebetter one will engage in public justification.8

Finally, if there are indeed spiritual beings such as sages who have escaped thetrappings of their bodies (a metaphysical issue I set aside), then it would makesense to pray and otherwise interact with them, and perhaps to do so for non-instrumental considerations. It might be good for its own sake to have positiverelationships with important persons (say, the Buddha or ancestors) living inanother realm. Or, if a sense of cultural identity is something that meritsprotection by the government, then government could have a reasonableinterest in whether its citizens are praying.

I do not conclude that other, major welfarist indices such as the HumanDevelopment Index (HDI) of the UNDP (2010) or the Better Life Index (BLI) of theOECD (2013) are flawed for not including spiritual factors, let alone those thatare a part of GNH. I merely point out that there is prima facie reason to questionthe completeness of these indices in light of GNH. If one supposes, for the sake ofargument, that a government ought to aim to improve its citizens’ quality of life,

8. Here, too, one should recall GNH’s inclusion of moral values in the education domain.

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then there is real debate to be had about whether a state should promotespiritual dimensions in the way Bhutan does.9 The point is that one need not bean adherent to a narrow, religious conception of the good life such as Buddhismin order to find reason to take seriously the spiritual elements of GNH; instead ofthat foundation for them, one might appeal to considerations of mental health,prudence, moral virtue or cultural identity, values that are at bottom secular andmight be widely shared in a certain context.

Of course, a number in the liberal tradition deny that any conception of thegood life, even one that is not fundamentally religious and that is commonly held,should form the basis for government action. As I indicated in the introduction tothis article, I do not address that philosophical perspective here,10 and instead amaddressing those who believe that the prospect of residents living good lives canjustly be a basic reason for a government to adopt laws or other rules.

However, even when it comes to liberalism, it is worth noting that GNH’sspiritual dimensions might not be something to dismiss. After all, it is one thingfor a state to measure people’s happiness, part of which might be indicated byspirituality, and it is another for a state to act so as to promote people’shappiness. Although Bhutan is interested in measuring people’s happiness inorder to enable the government to promote it where it is particularly lacking,some other government could sensibly be interested in determining the extent towhich people are happy merely so as to enable them to promote it amongthemselves, if they so choose. Although that approach would not be consistentwith an extreme form of liberalism, it might well be with a moderate form.

Turning now to a second respect in which GNH is unique and in an intriguingway, relative to welfarist indices used by the UN and the OECD, consider the factthat it includes creativity among its key elements of happiness. Specifically,under the heading of ‘culture’, GNH enquires into the extent to which peoplehave acquired artisan skills such as painting, weaving and smithing. Although thefocus is on practices particular to Bhutanese tradition, and some of themotivation is no doubt to support that way of life, another facet includes usingone’s imagination and employing sophisticated techniques to externalize one’svision into a work of art that is pleasing or revealing. This, too, is missing in theHDI and the BLI, but should give defenders of those indices pause. The HDI doesinclude a category of ‘decent work’ (UNDP 2010, 188–191), but that focuses onthings such as whether there is maternity leave, formal appointment, an absenceof child labour and the like; the content of the activity is not addressed.

A third interesting facet of GNH is its focus on community vitality, and, inparticular, positive interpersonal relationships as an essential part of a good life.The BLI reduces considerations of what it labels ‘social connections’ to whether

9. See also Basu (2005) for criticism of the HDI from a Hindu spiritual perspective.

10. I will just note that an interesting argumentative strategy suggested by, but underexplored in, theliterature for questioning the standard conception of liberalism is to consider broadening the usualnotion of what counts as a ‘primary good’ to include the use of a state (Metz 2001), relationships(Brake 2010) and subjective well-being (Wren-Lewis 2013).

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one has friends or relatives to help one if one gets into trouble (OECD 2013, 6),and the HDI reduces ‘community’ to satisfaction with one’s social environment interms of educational and job opportunities, lack of crime and the like.11 Incontrast, the Bhutanese explicitly deem well-being to be partially indicated, andpresumably constituted, by experiencing a sense of belonging, trusting one’sneighbours and being part of a family (Ura et al. 2012a, 29–30; Boniwell 2013,263–284), relations that are particularly valued in the East, but of course farfrom only there.

Fourth, and finally, consider the way GNH conceives of environmentalprotection in comparison to other indices. While including ecological considera-tions was novel four decades ago, these days it is old hat. However, GNH’sapproach to them still includes a twist, namely, a non-anthropocentric orienta-tion. Most environmental markers are about pollution insofar as it affects humanbeings and are about sustainability in the sense of using nature in ways that donot exhaust it so that future generations of human beings will be able to flourish.GNH of course includes these concepts, but it also suggests that human beingsare not the only important beings, according moral status to all creaturescapable of suffering.12 In particular, one question posed to citizens is the extentto which they take environmental responsibility, and implied here is the viewthat ‘harmony with nature has intrinsic value’, which includes not only‘relationships with non-human life forms’ (Alkire 2013, 41), but also appreciatingnatural beauty (Alkire 2013, 41, 42).

Here is a bird’s-eye view of what I have pointed out that GNH includes but thatother influential welfarist indices do not. Consider that much of what those whofavour an objective conception of the good life deem to be most worth pursuingis a function of the classic triad known as ‘the good, the true and thebeautiful’.13 The phrase ‘the good’ in this context does not refer to pleasureor other subjective elements such as desire satisfaction, but rather in the firstinstance to beneficent or sharing relationships. That is, objectivists about thegood tend to think that one major dimension of a particularly meaningful orworthwhile life consists of friendliness, love, community and morality. A secondsuch dimension is ‘the true’, which refers not merely to knowledge or accuratebeliefs, but more broadly to justified and sophisticated intellectual reflectionabout nature and society as well as to wisdom with regard to oneself and others.And a third dimension of a noticeably desirable life, at least for objectivetheorists, is ‘the beautiful’, which connotes for them not merely certain patterns

11. This is not explicit in key HDI documents, but the UNDP (2010, 183) indicates that its communitydimension relies strictly on Gallup polls, which cash out community as above (Gallup 2013).12. There is little literature highlighting this facet of GNH, but see Priesner (1999, 37–38). I firstbecame aware of it in January 2013 as a result of personal conversation with Dasho Karma Ura, theintellectual figurehead of GNH in Bhutan.13. For uses of this phrase by some influential thinkers, see Steiner (1923) and Schlick (1927, 69–70).For thorough discussion of the triad in the context of what makes a life meaningful, see Metz(2011, 2013).

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that are pleasing to the human eye or ear, but also, more broadly, the creativeproduction, and appreciation, of art-objects. Taking the triad for granted as aplaceholder for a superlatively choice-worthy life, one may say that GNHcaptures the good, the true and the beautiful to a more substantial degreethan the HDI or the BLI.14

First off, unlike the other indices, recall that GNH measures the degree towhich people are in good relationships, enquiring into the extent to which peopleenjoy a sense of togetherness, experience trust, engage in volunteer work andare part of a family. Second, although it is tempting to say that the true is largelycovered by the category of education in GNH as well as the HDI and the BLI, thelatter invariably reduce it to the level of formal schooling acquired and theextent of cognitive skills. Only GNH considers the content of what people aretaught as relevant to evaluating their well-being, including (among other things)knowledge of basic morals, a kind of wisdom. Third, and finally, both the BLI andthe HDI exclude creative output among people when measuring their well-being,whereas GNH includes it. Insofar as it plausible to see (roughly) love, knowledgeand art as quintessential facets of a particularly desirable life, one has seriousreasons to consider GNH as more well-rounded than the most influential indicesused in the West.

How Should GNH Be Revised?

So far, I have argued that GNH has some things going for it that other influentialwelfarist indices do not. In this section, I consider the converse, whether GNH ismissing certain elements in light of contemporary theoretical reflection,particularly Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach (2011). There are ofcourse a wide array of conceptions of the good on offer, and not merely fromtwenty-first-century English-speaking philosophers. In the following when Iappraise GNH, I try to avoid particularly controversial views about the natureof a good life and about those elements of it that a state ought to promote. Forinstance, I do not question the fact that neither God nor sex is part of GNH.15

Instead, I discuss three respects in which many readers would agree, sometimesupon reflection on Nussbaum’s influential work, that GNH is plausibly viewed asmissing some relevant welfarist elements.

Although there is substantial overlap between GNH and Nussbaum’s influential10 key human capabilities, I suspect the latter include some conditions that theformer does not but should. For a first example, although both indicate that

14. That is not yet to say that GNH is more comprehensive than philosophical theories of the good lifeor even of the goods that a state ought to make available, as in e.g. Nussbaum (2011), discussedbelow.15. Noticed, with laughter, by myself and others at a January 2013 meeting of the InternationalExpert Working Group on Happiness and Well-Being, which The Centre for Bhutan Studies formed inlate 2012 and early 2013 to help explicate GNH for an international audience of governments andpolicy-makers (resulting in Boniwell 2013). Note, by the way, that Nussbaum does include sexualsatisfaction among her conception of key human capabilities for a state to advance (2011, 33).

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exhibiting certain emotions is central to a good life, GNH eschews negativeemotions.

(T)hose who categorise emotions into positive and negative do not propose thatall negative emotions are harmful to the individual or to others (Watson, Clarkand Tellegen 1988). Most understand all emotions to be an aid for survival andnecessary for the full range of human experience. In contrast, from the Buddhistviewpoint prevalent in Bhutan, it is crucial to develop positive emotions whilereducing the force of negative emotions, in order to increase one’s happiness andwellbeing. The GNH Index thus reflects this position. (Ura et al. 2012b, 128; seealso Tashi 2004)

The Buddhist ideal of detachment from an uncontrollable world of suffering leadsto the judgment that ‘negative emotions are to be gradually overcome’ so that‘ultimately it would be best to have a society with a low frequency of negativeemotions’ (Ura et al. 2012b, 131). And those not in the Buddhist tradition canprobably feel some of the pull of the idea that one’s life would be the better, themore one were free of jealousy, anger, fear and worry, which are the keynegative emotions for GNH.

However, Nussbaum mentions some negative emotions that do seem worthexhibiting, such as justified anger and grief (2011, 33). It is typical of Westernethicists to think that bad conditions warrant negative emotional (and other)reactions such as dislike and anger and that good ones deserve positive responsessuch as loving and being glad about (e.g. Hurka 2001; Wolf 2010). And even apartfrom that philosophical orientation, most readers will find it intuitive to thinkthat one would be living poorly in some respect if one were not disposed to beupset by gross injustice or the death of a loved one. Truly loving one’s spouseseems to include being inclined to mourn his passing, after all. And if peoplewere unhappy in eight of the domains of GNH, it seems that it would be apt forthem to exhibit negative emotions when it comes to the ninth domain ofpsychological well-being; perhaps living well in that situation would includefeeling resentment and frustration, as opposed to being Pollyanna-ish. (In anyevent, the priority of the government should surely be to improve their livesalong those eight dimensions, rather than to address the resentment andfrustration in themselves.) At least for many readers, or for a Western context,then, it would not be apt to deem ‘emotional balance’ to be a matter ofexhibiting relatively few negative emotions simpliciter.

A second respect in which GNH might have something to learn fromNussbaum’s work concerns the prominent role of individual freedom in it. As iswell known, she usually focuses on capabilities to do or be in certain ways, ratherthan the doings or beings themselves, out of the view that a government ought inthe first instance to give people the opportunity to choose whether to do and bewell. Nussbaum rejects the idea of a paternalist state that would force people tolive good lives against their will. In addition, among her capabilities is bodilyintegrity, which entails that, say, a doctor at a public hospital ought not to trickone into taking medicine that would cure illness, but rather should offer it to

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one, abiding by norms of informed consent. Unlike Nussbaum’s approach, GNHdoes not wear individual civil liberty on its sleeve (noted by Alkire 2013, 10).

Although this is another place where characteristically Western and Asianvalues are probably pulling in different directions, Nussbaum’s approach isreasonably deemed to be attractive middle ground.16 Much of the twentiethcentury witnessed a global battle between two models of government, namely,on the one hand, a state radically narrowing residents’ options in light of amonolithic conception of how best to live, and, on the other, a state refrainingfrom acting for the sake of people’s good and leaving citizens to their owndevices when it comes to how to live. In contrast to both extremes, it isreasonable to suggest that a state should seek to guide people’s decision-makingtowards a variety of value-rich behaviours, enabling and perhaps even nudgingpeople to take advantage of community, creativity and the like, but with aminimal use of coercion. Providing citizens the capabilities to live well is aplausible ‘third alternative’ to Eastern totalitarianism and Western liberalism.Substantial meaning, excellence or even positive feelings cannot accrue ifpeople are forced into a certain way of life that they would not themselveschoose, and yet people often need help from the state in order to adopt ways oflife that they themselves should, and are likely to, recognize as desirable.

A third fair concern about GNH is its exclusive orientation towards whetherindividuals have obtained sufficient happiness, apparently neglecting concernsabout the relative distribution of happiness among society and, furthermore, theway that various kinds of inequalities can affect absolute levels of happiness. Asis well known, there has been new research over the past ten years indicatingthat certain inequalities, particularly with regard to wealth (and probably asthey are perceived by the populace), are correlated with, and likely the causeof, poorer health and reduced levels of cohesion (e.g. Wilkinson and Pickett2009). Of course, most of GNH does not concern wealth; only the domain of livingstandards does. However, there is nothing in GNH that in principle would rule outgreat inequalities of wealth, which might affect people’s ability to achievesufficiency in the other eight domains. And, more deeply, one might think that asociety with great inequalities in many of the other eight domains, say, those ofhealth and education, would in itself be sick, unjust or otherwise undesirable.

Such considerations have led to the HDI being adjusted to include measures ofinequality (UNDP 2010), and it is reasonable to suggest that GNH should be, too.Focusing on the well-being of the worst off, which Bhutan does in response to theGNH Index, does not necessarily mean that substantial inequality will beavoided, which might mean that the index itself should be revised.

I take the above to be three of the most important respects in which friends ofGNH might plausibly reconsider the current form of the index. There are ofcourse additional values that are fair candidates for being part of a good life; forinstance, Nussbaum includes play and laughter (2011, 33). However, these do not

16. Some of the rest of this paragraph borrows from Metz (2014).

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seem as powerful when it comes to those elements of well-being that a stateought to be addressing, or at least prioritizing.

Moving Forward with GNH: Go Local or Go Global?

One key question at this point is what is to be done in light of the purportedadvantages of GNH relative to the HDI and BLI, on the one hand, and its apparentdisadvantages compared to Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach (and the HDI), onthe other. How to proceed in light of the competing conceptions of well-being?

There are two paths available. One might seek to change GNH and otherindices so that they come closer together in content, in effect aiming to developa single, globally applicable happiness index. Or, one might tailor indices tovarious countries and regions.

My hunch is that, as things stand, it would be useful to engage in both projectsat the same time. It seems clear to most philosophers these days that some goodsand bads are universally applicable, even if not universally appreciated, e.g. thatit is better to be a composer or teacher than someone who engages inprostitution to feed a drug addiction. However, the jury is still out on the extentof such fairly uncontroversial and absolute dis/values. In addition, even if it wereestablished that there are many universally applicable dis/values, they oftenshould be applied differently depending on the context. And, furthermore, therewould still be substantial debate about how to weigh dis/values relative to oneanother. To me, these considerations together suggest encouraging countries notonly to measure happiness as conceived locally, but also to engage with otherparts of the world in search of overlapping consensus about the kinds of well-being that a state ought to produce (and the kinds of woe it ought to reduce).

With respect to Bhutan, then, it seems apt for it to continue to employ GNH asan index grounded on the country’s largely Buddhist traditions. However, itwould make sense for that country simultaneously to reflect critically on GNH inlight of other, more Euro-American approaches, and vice versa. For instance, isthere a way for the Buddhist tradition to accommodate Nussbaum’s suggestionthat some negative emotions are part of a desirable life? Might friends of GNH,upon reflection, readily accept the idea that capabilities for the nine domains ofhappiness, and their rough equalization, are what the state should focus on, andnot sufficient realization of the goods themselves by individuals? Conversely,should advocates of indices such as the HDI and BLI think carefully aboutincluding moral virtue, beneficent relationships, creative activities and non-anthropocentric values in their conceptions of a good life for human beings? Isubmit that reflection on GNH indicates that some interesting cross-culturalexchange should take place in order to determine whether a truly globalhappiness index is on the cards.

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Acknowledgements

For helpful comments on a prior draft of this article, I thank ChristopherWareham and two anonymous referees for this journal, one of whom offeredparticularly thoughtful input. In addition, I am grateful to Dasho Karma Ura andProfessor Sabine Alkire for having invited me onto the International ExpertWorking Group on Happiness and Well-Being, which was the impetus for me toreflect critically on Bhutan’s GNH Index.

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