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NMSU philosophy student Shelbi Meissner, 22, center, sports a toga while speaking with students Kevin Culver, 22, left, and Jeremy Madrid, 22, in front of Corbett Center. Meissner exchanged chocolates for answers as she asked, "What makes you happy?"

LAS CRUCES —There are songs about happiness, odes to the often-elusive fuzzy feeling. There are poems, quotations, movies, dissertations, self-help books about how to discover it in 31 days.

It is pursued, cherished, lauded and enshrined in the Constitution and yellow smiley faces.

But what is happiness?

"There seems to be an idea of when everyone can tell when someone's happy, but there's no definition," New Mexico State University senior Melanie D'Isidoro said while standing outside the Corbett Center in a tan sheet, wrapped toga-style.


D'Isidoro and a handful of others students, most dressed in sheets turned togas, asked passers-by about their definitions of happiness Tuesday afternoon as part of a philosophy class lead by Professor Mark Walker.

Walker received a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to teach a class on happiness, "Should we want to be happy?", and incorporate unique teaching tools. He turned to Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher who put forward philosophical questions in public spaces and created the Socratic method, a form of inquiry and debate through asking and answering questions.

After reading works by Plato and other philosophers, Walker decided to have his students learn from "doing philosophy" in a public space.

The students, dressed in togas and sandals for extra credit, channeled the ancient Athenian and posed questions to their peers on the definition of happiness.

That warm feeling inside, like nothing can go wrong, the bystanders responded. Bliss. Playing baseball. Calmness. Zero anxiety. They offered attitudinal pleasures, like being content; physical pleasures, like petting a dog; and mental pleasures, like talking with friends.

"My definition of happiness?" prospective student John Powers asked when D'Isidoro approached him. "I've never thought of that before. That's a good question.

"I want to be happy," he said. "Now what's going to make me happy, I don't know."

The philosophers offered Hershey's fun-size candy in exchange for a reply, swapping candy for nuggets of wisdom.

The exercise helped the students add to their own definitions of happiness, D'Isidoro said.

Toga-wearing philosophy junior Casey Lange is himself unsure of the definition.

"I have no idea yet," he said. "I think it does have something to do with attitudinal pleasure, though; I think that's a big part of it."

For D'Isidoro, happiness requires all of the forms of pleasure: physical, mental, friendships.

"I think happiness is a combination of lots of different things that have to come together," she said. "I have a long list of things that are required to have true happiness."
