The Positive Role of Melancholy in Enhancing Well-Being: Authentic Happiness, Informed Desires and 'Living in the Moment'

This paper explores an under-theorised phenomenon, the experience of melancholy as a potential source for enhancing psychological well-being. Drawing from sources in literature, our common intuitions, and evidence from psychology, two potential outcomes of melancholy are indentified: insightful pensiveness, and emotional connectedness with sadness and loss. Contrary to expectations from many contemporary philosophers, melancholy can, as a result, be conducive to well-being enhancement. The paper demonstrates how experiencing melancholy is often excluded in philosophical debates on well-being. However, despite this exclusion, many of these same debates provide theoretical room for including melancholy as a means of enhancing well-being. First, the pensiveness associated with melancholy can facilitate personal insights, which help develop and refine 'authentic happiness' and 'informed desires', often seen as necessary for well-being enhancement. Second, melancholy, when evoking an emotional connectedness with feelings of loss, can lead to the positive acceptance of personal limitations and the limits of human beings in general. These outcomes, too, are necessary for enhancing individual well-being and is consistent with the conclusions of philosophy and findings in psychology, as a person is able to more readily commit to 'living in the moment' and so derive satisfaction from her presently-orientated activities and commitments.