Philosophia

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00524-w

Happy Unhappiness (and Other Stratified Contradictions)

Franca d’Agostini1 

Received: 3 December 2021 / Revised: 7 April 2022 / Accepted: 13 April 2022

© The Author(s) 2022, corrected publication 2022

Abstract
Stratified properties such as ‘happy unhappiness’, ‘ungrounded ground’, ‘fortunate mis-
fortune’, and evidently ‘true falsity’ may generate dialetheias (true contradictions). The
aim of the article is to show that if this is the case, then we will have a special, conjunc-
tive, kind of dialetheia: a true state description of the form ‘Fa and not Fa’ (for some prop-
erty F and object a), wherein the two conjuncts, separately taken, are to be held untrue.
The particular focus of the article is on happy unhappiness: people suffering from (or
enjoying) happy unhappiness (if there is some situation or state of mind of this kind) can-
not be truly said ‘happy’ or ‘unhappy’, but we can say they are both. In the first section
three cases of conjunctive stratification are presented; in the second section the logic of
stratified contradictions is explored. The last section focuses on eudemonistic ascriptions:
stated that a is happy to be unhappy (or unhappy to be happy), should we say a is happy?
unhappy? both? neither?

Keywords  Paradoxes · Stratification · Conjunctive paraconsistency · Happiness

Stratified contradictions are released by properties such as ‘fortunate misfortune’,

‘immodest modesty’, ‘happy unhappiness’, ‘ungrounded ground’. In the research
about paradoxes contradictory stratifications have been studied in terms of ‘diag-
onalization’ (Simmons, 1993, 2018; Smullyan, 1994); ‘indefinite extensibility’
(Dummett, 1993: 454; Williamson, 1998; Cook, 2007); ‘typological ambiguity’
(Russell & Whitehead, 1910-13: 130); ‘closure’ (Tarski, 1933, 1944), etc.1 Most

1
  Recent accounts in this largely Tarskian line, but with a focus on the nature of properties (a meta-
physical concern, loosely intended) are to be found in Field (2008: 25–28 and 34–36); Uzquiano (2006);
Scharp (2013: 35–56). In the literature on the foundations of mathematics (especially after Quine’s New
Foundations – Quine 1937) the notion of ‘stratification’ has a prescriptive meaning, being distinctive of
hierarchic approaches to inconsistencies; more generally it is intended as ‘a means to achieve consist-
ency’ (Cantini, 2015: 369). Clearly, I intend it in merely descriptive a sense.

* Franca d’Agostini
franca.dagostini@unimi.it
1
Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Milan, Milan, Italy

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 Philosophia

often, stratifications involve semantic properties, typically, ‘truth’ or ‘denotation’.

However, they may enter plausible descriptions of states of affairs that are not
semantic, as do not directly regard truth or meaning.2
The focus of the analysis here proposed is on the special stratification which we may
call ‘happy unhappiness’ (or unhappy happiness). In the dialetheic account of para-
doxes, stratified properties of this kind typically generate true contradictions. The aim
of the article is to show that if we accept this diagnosis, then we might have a conjunc-
tive kind of dialetheia: a true state description of the form ‘Pa and not Pa’ (for some
property P and object a), wherein the two conjuncts, separately taken, are to be held
untrue. In practice, people suffering from (or being affected by) happy unhappiness (if
there is some condition or state of mind of this kind) cannot be said strictly ‘happy’ or
‘unhappy’, but we can say they are both. In this respect, stratified inconsistencies are
interesting case studies for conjunctive paraconsistency (see Ripley, 2015; Barrio & Da
Ré, 2018, d’Agostini 2021), whereby some ‘Pa and not Pa’ is acceptable without explo-
sion since the rule of Simplification for contradictions does not work.3
In the first section the case of happy unhappiness is presented with other two similar
cases. In the second section, the logic of stratified contradictions is explored: the basic idea
is that contradictory stratifications are brought about by special properties, whose logical
impact is ruled by the mutually modifying effects of their parts, so that the resulting contra-
diction is to be conceived as a peculiar, ‘inseparable’ conjunction of contradictories.4 The
last section substantiates the idea by considering eudemonistic ascriptions: when and how
are we entitled to say that a is happy, or unhappy, or neither or both? Can we really say that
a is both, or neither, stated that a is happy to be unhappy, or unhappy to be happy? And if
we can say a is both, what is the behaviour of the resulting contradiction?

1 Happy Unhappiness, Fortunate Misfortune, Unfortunate Epistemic

Fortune

The famous Italian poet (and philosopher) Giacomo Leopardi was extremely
unhappy in his life. His negative mood pervades all his poetical and non-poetical
work. Inspired by his own unhappiness, he authored beautiful poems. Was Leopardi

2
  Even in macro-physical world oxymora such as ‘hot ice’ may have empirical correlates: it is typically
the case of crystallized sodium acetate, called with this name just because it joins (transitory) hotness
with all the other properties of iced water. Various informal analyses of value terms stratifications have
been offered. See, for instance, the notion of ‘immodest modesty’ studied by Bloch (2018), exploring
women’s dress codes in Judaism. Somewhat ‘unassertive asserters’ are the focus of Lackey (2008, 2013),
who studies the nature of ‘self-less assertions’ and their difference from deceptive speech acts.
3
  A similar position is not so frequent in the recent literature but has been sparsely present in the phil-
osophical tradition (see d’Agostini 2021, and Authors 2021). Sparse hints can be found nowadays in
d’Agostini (2011 and 2021), Beall (2006a, b), Beall and Ficara (2014), Cobreros et al. (2015), Estrada
Gonzales (2017), Ficara (2021), Kabay (2010). The plausibility of conjunctivism in paraconsistency in
general is not the specific concern of this paper (though it has been explored elsewhere: d’Agostini 2021
and 2022); the aim is simply to show that stratified contradictions involving value terms such as ‘happi-
ness’ (or ‘fortune’) may favour conjunctivist evaluations.
4
  In the terminology of relevant logic, a conjunction of this kind (not specifically restricted to contradic-
tory cases) is a ‘fusion’ (see Mares, 2012; Read, 1988). Some more details about the applicability of
‘fusion’ to conjunctive inconsistencies are to be found in d’Agostini 2021.

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 Philosophia

unhappy, in writing what he wrote? Perhaps he was not. As Paul Valéry observed,
well written unhappiness is not so unhappy, in the end.5 If we accept Valéry’s sug-
gestion, we will not say that Leopardi was unhappy, nor will we say he was happy.
We would more correctly say he was both, as he suffered from (or enjoyed) happy
unhappiness: a complex property, with internally conflicting parts. Maybe he was
happy as a poet, and unhappy as a human being (§ 3.4), but we have to note that he
was happy poet in virtue of his being unhappy man, so we can say he had the special
stratified property.6 Evidently, we are not referring to the real poet who really lived
in the XIX century, but to the ideal–typical Leopardi, taken as paradigmatic of a
man whose unhappiness (via poetry) grounds his happiness, so that we can say he
has the property of being happy to be unhappy (§ 3.2).
A similar case is The Paradox of Fortunate Misfortune (Smilansky, 1994, 2007).
A young girl, Abigail, was born ‘with a combination of unfortunate defects’ in her
legs and breathing. To correct them she needed to learn to swim and to continue
swimming in an intensive way, which she did, so that, after a certain number of
years, her breathing and legs became normal. Meanwhile, she became an excellent
swimmer, to the point that she won the women backstroke championship for many
years.7 What do you think about Abigail? Was she fortunate, or unfortunate? Both?
Neither? She was both, in a sense, but we cannot exactly say she was one thing or
the other. The appropriate description of Abigail’s case is that her misfortune has
made her fortunate. In the same way, we can say that the ideal–typical Leopardi was
happy in virtue of and thanks to his unhappiness.8 Surely, in the end, Abigail’s for-
tune was dominant, but in our honest evaluation of the entire case we do not assume
one or the other of the two incompatible properties (see 2.1).
Symmetrically opposed is the example of unfortunate fortune mentioned by Fric-
ker (2007: 19–21). It is not presented as a paradox, or as a ‘true contradiction’, it
is rather intended to show that ‘credibility is not a good that belongs with the dis-
tributive model of justice’ (Fricker, 2007: 19). Nevertheless, it is a useful case study
for our present needs, as it depicts a situation whose description and evaluation may
involve stratified contradictory predicates. A certain knower, let us call him Gilles,
has always been ‘overly esteemed in his capacity as a knower’, and has received an
education that favours in him the persuasion that such esteem is justified. His self-
confidence strengthens the persuasive impact of his assertions, so confirming (to
him and to everyone else) the idea that he has special epistemic authority. Thanks to
all this, Gilles receives many social advantages, for instance lucrative employment
and high status in all his conversational or discussive transactions. Now ‘all this also
causes him to develop such an epistemic arrogance that a range of epistemic virtues

5
 Valéry, 1933.
6
  As it will be better explained later (Sect. 3), the important point is that having a certain property (being
happy) is grounded on having another, opposite, property.
7
 Smilansky, 2007: 12.
8
  As Smilansky rightly notes, Abigail’s fortune strictly depends on her misfortune, it is not comparable,
for example, to the case of a person who has an accident, and at the hospital finds the girl or the boy who
will be the passion of their life: in this case, the person’s fortune is not strictly related to their misfortune.

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 Philosophia

are put out of his reach, rendering him closed-minded, dogmatic, blithely impervious
to criticism’ (Fricker, 2007: 20). Eventually, he is ‘wronged precisely in his capacity
as a knower’, he suffers from a disadvantage that is strictly due to his preliminary
advantage and is unprivileged precisely in virtue of his original privilege. Gilles is
clearly a case of unfortunate fortunate person (at least from an epistemic point of
view).
Do you think that Leopardi was happy? As far as you are acquainted with his
case, can you honestly say he was? Most likely, you cannot. If anything, you know
his unhappiness was of a special kind, so you can hardly say that he was unhappy
either. Do you think Abigail is only fortunate? Most likely you do not. She has been
a truly unfortunate girl, in many respects, but you cannot say that she is completely
unfortunate, as this would underrate her fortune. Similarly, it is evident that Gilles’
fortune as a knower has made him an unfortunate knower, but we cannot truthfully
say he is only epistemically unfortunate, for the same reasons why we cannot say he
was a fortunate knower.
And yet, in all these cases we should admit that the two predicates are jointly
appropriate: we face objects that have (or seem to have) opposite properties, but we
cannot say they have only one of them.

2 Two Gaps for One Glut

In this account, happy unhappiness, fortunate misfortune, unfortunate fortune and

similar cases release some true conjunction of the form ‘α & not α’, but in a way that
does not allow for Simplification (&Elimination). We have a ‘true contradiction’,
a dialetheic situation (Priest, 1987, 2006), but so made that the two contradictory
terms are inseparable, as they, separately taken, are untrue. As it were, two gappy
(untrue) sentences form a glutty conjunction.9
Adopting a convention proposed in d’Agostini 2021 and 2022, I suggest distin-
guishing dialetheism, intended as the general idea that there are two contradictions,
and di-aletheism (to be pronounced di:-ə-ˈli-theism), whereby a true contradiction
is a true proposition or statement whose negation is true.10 A dialetheic but not
di-aletheic account of contradictions can be generalized, so we endorse, as men-
tioned, a conjunctive version of paraconsistency. A similar conception implies that
in contradictory cases, the usual behaviour of ‘and’, whereby ‘p & q’ is true iff ‘p’
is true and ‘q’ is true, does not hold; the left-to-right direction of the bi-conditional

9
  There are reasons to believe that such a view can offer a new and profitable way of dealing with para-
doxes. Interestingly, it will combine the two main non-classical approaches, the paracomplete (truth
value gaps) and the paraconsistent (truth value gluts), the former for the contradictories, the latter for the
contradiction (details can be found in d’Agostini 2021 and Authors 2021).
10
 The plausibility of this distinction is confirmed by the fact that among the various definitions of
‘dialetheism’ (usefully listed in Martin 2014, 225–228) the dominant is not the idea of di-aletheia (true
proposition whose negation is true) but the idea of dialetheia (‘true contradiction’ or ‘true ‘p and not
p’’ without specification). About this, and about the content of this sub-section in general, see again
d’Agostini 2021, Authors 2021 and Author 2022.

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 Philosophia

fails: the two conjuncts are so closely connected, that no separate assertion of them
can be held true. It is not the case here of endorsing a position of this kind in gen-
eral, but the mentioned cases confirm that the conjunctive program may work, at
least for some kinds of inconsistency. Leopardi was not strictly happy, nor was he
strictly unhappy, though we can say he was both. Abigail was not strictly fortunate
nor was she fortunate (the two predicates only capture a half of the situation), but
she was both.11

2.1 Unassertability

The separate judgements ‘Abigail is fortunate’, ‘Gilles is unfortunate’, ‘Leopardi was

happy’, must be held unassertable, not because they do not strictly correspond to
parts of a subsisting state, but because they are incomplete, and specifically mis-
leading, state descriptions. The nature of ‘assertability conditions’ is a controver-
sial topic in the philosophy of language,12 but there is general agreement about the
potentially deceiving action of incomplete statements.13 In fact, in case of (puta-
tively) true contradictions, the conjunctive view is very intuitive: in case ‘p and not
p’ is true, any separate assertion of ‘p’ or ‘not p’ will be deceiving, omitting a rel-
evant part of the case under discussion.
Evidently, not every partial truth is ‘unassertable’ in this sense. Very often, partial
descriptions of occurring states are perfectly assertable, even in the case of strictly
connected (‘fused’) properties. Suppose you describe a certain red and round object
α: the two properties are metaphysically fused together (see Fine, 2012: 72), but you
can truthfully say ‘α is red’ and ‘α is round’ separately. Instead, in case of Abigail,
Leopardi, and Gilles, any exclusive selection of one of the two state descriptions
would be definitely misleading. In Grice’s classical paradigm, one would say these
assertions would violate the maxims of quantity (incomplete conversational convey-
ance) as well as the maxim of quality (failure of truthfulness), and the latter in virtue
of the former. If you assert (or assume, or think) that Abigail is fortunate, people (or
yourself) might be led to conclude that she does not deserve any solidarity, while in
fact, in a sense, she does. If you assume Gilles is unfortunate, you omit a part of the
story which is crucial to understanding his case. Your ascription of the predicates,
separately taken, would make your audience believe falsity. Leopardi’s case may be
more controversial (see § 3.3), but accepting Valéry’s suggestion, you would not say
he was purely and simply unhappy; there was something more in his story (possibly,
a special sort of creative unhappiness?).

11
  As mentioned, in relevance logic, ‘fusion’ is an ‘and’ that works as a ‘premise binder’ (see Mares,
2012), so that once we obtain ‘p and q’ we are not entitled to infer p or q separately. In exact truthmaker
semantics, the truthmaker of ‘p and q’ is not necessarily a truthmaker of ‘p’ and ‘q’ (see Jago, 2018, fol-
lowing Rodriguez-Pereyra, 2006, 2009). So there are reasons to believe a truthmaker relevance semantics
might endorse the dialetheic-non-di-aletheic option.
12
  Especially interesting for our needs is the discussion about the role of truth in assertions, about which
see Marsili (2018, 2021a, b). I will come back to this point later.
13
 The debate has been critical for assessing the differences between lying and misleading, and the
alleged preferability of the latter over the former. See on this Saul 2012 for a first systematization of the
theme, and then Marsili 2020.

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 Philosophia

Such a view can be supported by considering other cases of putatively true con-
tradictions that do not present the stratified form. For instance, Cobreros et  al.,
(2015: 379–380) draw similar conclusions for vagueness, they construct a prag-
matic-epistemic semantics for gluts wherein contradictories are taken as bearing
‘half-truth’ (see also Cobreros et al., 2012). To support their view, they mention an
experiment of Serchuck et  al. (2011) concerning typically vague predicates, such
as ‘tall’. As it seems, most naïve speakers accept that a borderline tall man b is tall-
and-not-tall but are unwilling to accept an instance of the Excluded Middle, that
either ‘b is tall’ or ‘b is not tall’ is true. This does not simply mean that they want ‘a
third possibility’. Rather, they are aware that the contradiction is true (is made true
by an occurring state of affairs), but the two ‘epistemic parties’ separately defending
‘b is tall’ and ‘b is not tall’ are both incorrect, because they offer an incomplete state
description as it were the whole truth.
Generalized conjunctivism in paraconsistency is to be supported by other consid-
erations; yet we can begin by supposing that—at least in this pragmatic-epistemic
approach—the idea has some plausibility.

2.2 Predicates that Modify Themselves

Generally, non-simplifiable ‘and’ in natural language are not propositional and

cannot be translated into propositional conjunctions, nor do they function any-
thing like conjunction. But the claim that all ‘ands’ are of this kind is ‘an Aris-
totelian fallacy’, as there are several cases of unreducible conjunction (Schein,
2017: 97). Most similar to the ‘and’ of which we are speaking are cases involving
predicate modifiers.
‘Abigail is an American girl’ is correctly translatable into ‘Abigail is a girl
and Abigail is American’, and the two conjuncts can be asserted separately
without equivocation, because both ‘girl’ and ‘American’ are intended to mod-
ify Abigail (just as happens in the case of the red-round ball). Instead, ‘Gilles
is a good politician’ is not equivalent to ‘Gilles is good and Gilles is a politi-
cian’, as Gilles might not be a good person, and accordingly, equivocation may
come from the scope of negation: stated that Gilles is not a good politician,
it may well be that Gilles is not a politician but is good. Evidently, we have
properties that modify properties: ‘good’ modifies ‘politician’, but not Gilles
directly.
Now, we can admit that the kind of conjunction that joins ‘Leopardi was
happy’ and ‘Leopardi was unhappy’ is such, that one proposition works as a
modifier of the other. More precisely, each of the two properties modifies the
other: they are mutual modifiers. As the two properties are ascribed to the same
object, the most evident consequence is that if Gilles is a good politician we
can infer that Gilles is a politician, while having that Leopardi was affected by
happy unhappiness (or unhappy happiness), we cannot infer Leopardi’s happi-
ness or unhappiness. The close connection of the properties is given in virtue
of the mutual modification imported by one and the other. And more specifi-
cally, they are inseparable because the separation of one, alethically, implies the

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 Philosophia

exclusion of the other. Clearly, dialetheists contend that in case of contradictions

the exclusionary action of truth fails: the truth of ‘p’ does not necessarily entail
that ‘not p’ is untrue (or false). A conjunctive account of dialetheias implies
that, instead, alethic exclusion is preserved: when we say ‘it is true that Leopardi
was happy’ we mean that ‘Leopardi was unhappy’ is untrue, but we are per-
fectly entitled to depict the situation by saying ‘it is true that Leopardi was both
happy and unhappy’. In practice, negation loses all exclusionary action, while
truth preserves it.14
You might give various interpretations of these cases. Some of them will avoid
the dialetheic conclusion. For instance you may be willing to adopt a non-adjunc-
tive strategy, so you may say that Leopardi’s happy unhappiness is only apparently
expressible as a stratification of incompatible properties, for instance, because the
happiness is not to be ascribed to him or to his being unhappy, but to his work. Or
you may concede that he actually instantiated the complex property, but there was no
mutual modification, as he had rather successful and not strictly happy unhappiness:
he was a successful though unhappy poet. Much depends, evidently, on the sub-prop-
erties you postulate as distinctive of happiness, so I will reconsider these options later
(§ 3.2.). But also the other strategy makes sense: the description of his case in terms
of ‘Hλ & not Hλ’ has some plausibility. And if you accept this, you ought to endorse,
eventually, a dialetheic and non-di-aletheic conclusion: Leopardi had both properties,
but one cannot truthfully say or think that he had only one of them.

2.3 Stratified Truth

It is important to remember that in the cases of Leopardi, Abigail, and Gilles, we

have some object λ that has a certain property (being happy, being fortunate or
unfortunate) in virtue of having another, opposite, property. Unhappiness is cause-
ground of happiness, misfortune generates fortune, and vice versa. Interestingly, the
same should be said of the Liar’s sentence ‘μ’ that says
‘μ’ is untrue
As we know, if one assumes it is true, then it must be untrue, and if it is
untrue then it is true. But ‘μ’ is (said) true in virtue of being false, and false
because it is (said) true. So its truth grounds its falsity and vice versa. Again
we have mutual modification of properties. Abigail’s misfortune implied her
fortune, Leopardi’s unhappiness implied his happiness, just like the truth of
‘μ’ implies its being untrue, and Gilles’ fortune brought about his misfortune
as a knower.
There is no need here to develop the analogy, but consider that, as men-
tioned, the focus on stratification has been one of the main lines in the anal-
ysis of Liar-like paradoxes, which makes us think that the idea of mutual

14
  A more detailed analysis of all this is given by d’Agostini 2021 and 2022. Notably, the idea of contra-
dictory properties working as mutual modifiers can be assumed as a justification of the interpretation of
the ‘and’ involved in stratification as ‘premise binder’ (Mares, 2012).

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 Philosophia

modifiers could be profitably applied for a new glutty interpretation of these

paradoxes.15 We can admit that the sentence ‘μ’ ascribes to itself the strat-
ified property of being a truly untrue statement, so a predicate of the form
T〈¬Tx〉. 16 As I have suggested elsewhere (d’Agostini 2021, 6866–5867), such
an interpretation can be supported via an assertion-sensitive semantics, so that
the Liar’s sentence ‘¬T〈μ〉’, taken as an assertion, is held to be truth-implying,
so perfectly equivalent to T〈¬Tμ〉. Normally, assertion-sensitive approaches
to the Liar are intended to reject the dialetheic view (see Goldstein, 2000;
Jago, 2018, Ch. 9), but it can be acknowledged that, given T〈¬Tμ〉, with the
only support of the T-schema, we will have T〈μ ∧ ¬μ〉. 17 The move from the
stratified to the conjunctive form is perfectly acceptable. The point is to see
whether, once obtained the conjunctive truth, we are still willing to accept the
separate truth of it conjuncts. If the epistemic-pragmatic account of the previ-
ous cases works, then we will not. As a matter of fact, ‘μ’ cannot be held true,
nor can ‘¬μ’, but there are reasons to believe that the state description in terms
of ‘μ ∧ ¬μ’ is true.

3 Stratified Happiness: A Hypothesis

In the previous section we have established three points. First, that stratifications may
release contradictions, so that, given Φ(not Φα) for some property Φ and some object α,
you can correctly (truthfully) describe the situation in terms of ‘Φα & not Φα’. Second,
that Simplification (the left-to-right direction of the bi-conditional definition of ‘&’) fails
in these contradictions: we have a complex property, consisting of a close connection of
sub-properties that modify each other (one––if taken separately––is intended to exclude
the other). Third, that such a view consists of accepting the dialetheic idea that there
might be some cases of true contradictions but implying a different view about the joined
subsistence of contradictories. It is assumed the conjunctivist view whereby contradicto-
ries are inseparable parts of only one state of affairs (d’Agostini 2021, 6868), so that any
separate assertion of one or the other is unassertable, and untrue.
Now the next step is to check whether these ideas can be applied to the case of
happiness, or rather, to explore which notion of happiness can support the theory.

15
  The ‘two-gaps-for-one-glut’ strategy can also be assimilated to what Scharp labels ‘classical glut the-
ory’ noting that it has no devisable supporter in recent literature (Scharp 2013: 23). The conjunctivist
account of paradoxes can be labelled in this way as in rejecting the separate truth of conjuncts conjunc-
tivism is able to preserve the exclusionary properties of classical truth, while accepting true conjunctive
contradictions. See d’Agostini 2011 and 2021, 6866-6868 for more information about this treatment of
paradoxes and its consequences.
16
  As it were, truth is the ultimate generator of every contradictory stratification (maybe of every prob-
lem in logic), and stratified truth has typically grounding properties (see Cantini, 2015).
17
  TT implies T (T-Out), and then (T-Out); it also implies T (Df.) and then (T-Out), hence (I) and T )
(T-In). As you may note, there is no need for Excluded Middle, and no need to discharge the assumption.

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 Philosophia

3.1 Stratified H

The property we call happiness (H hereafter), is especially challenging, as in prin-

ciple, there are reasons to believe that the concept we call H is multi-dimensional,
variously conceived as an emotion, a mental state, a value, an affective episode, an
enduring or transitory state, a disposition, etc., occurring for the most disparate rea-
sons and based on the widest range of conditions. ‘The fauna of happiness is very
varied. Amusement, being care-free, comfort, content, delight, elation, enthusiasm,
exhilaration, affective fusion, ecstasy, fun, gaiety, gladness, …’ (Mulligan, 2016:
134). Despite this, there is a rich variety of recent contributes about H, especially,
as Haybron, 2020 stresses, in the philosophy of psychology and of social sciences.
Our focus here is on the alethic evaluation of H, so not on ‘H’ strictly intended as a
mental or social state, but as the property of being H, expressed by the predicate ‘x
is H’ which we can (correctly or incorrectly) ascribe to some object x.
In practice, we are interested in the ‘logic’ of H, and hence in the truth conditions
of H-ascriptions.18 In particular, we need to specify when and how we can truthfully
ascribe the predicates:

(1) H(Hx) (x is happy to be happy)

(2) ¬H(Hx) (x is unhappy to be happy)
(3) H(¬Hx) (x is happy to be unhappy)
(4) ¬H(¬Hx) (x is unhappy to be unhappy)

The cases (1) and (4) seem irrelevant, at first, as normally we are happy to be
happy, and unhappy to be unhappy, so the iteration has no distinctive effect. The
equivalence.

(5) H(Ha) 
↔ Ha

Seems to hold unrestrictedly. But note that if (5) holds, then (2) and (3) are
implausible, and (1) and (4) are simple happiness and unhappiness, respectively.
Instead, if we admit of (2) and (3), then also iterated positive and negative H (1) and
(4) must hold.
In fact, the endorsement of (5), and hence the irrelevance of stratifications, is gen-
erally due to postulate that H is a value as such (an objective value), so that (1)
and (4) are obvious, and (2) and (3) are wrong, being unequivocal marks of mental
disease, or ‘incorrect emotions’ (Mulligan, 2016: 135). However, in the psychologi-
cal literature the second order factivity of H expressed by (5) is discussed, namely
considering that a happy person is not always happy to be happy (or unhappy to
be unhappy).19 More specifically, the idea that being happy about one’s own

18
  This means that the perspective here adopted aims at developing a metaphysically oriented semantics,
in the line of Fine and Jago (2017), or Jago (2018).
19
  Maybe being H is not always and for everyone good. Rather, the ‘over-evaluation of happiness’ is held
to be an aspect of ‘perfectionism’ intended as an incorrect existential attitude (Landau, 2017: 31-48): H
is not to be pursued ‘at any rate’.

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 Philosophia

unhappiness or being unhappy to be happy is always a symptom of mental disor-

der is arguable, as one may have many subjective reasons to be ¬H(H) or H(¬H).
For example, insecurity, lack of self-esteem, excessive discipline, religion, repeated
negative experiences, realism, coolness, a sense of guilt or regret in consideration of
human frailty, are somewhat subjectively justified reasons for being in some sense
¬H(H) or H(¬H) (unhappy to be happy; happy to be unhappy).
Also note that (2) and (3) can be held equivalent, in principle, but much depends on how
one interprets the stratification. One might think that in case of a having H(¬H), H is domi-
nant: a is definitely H, and the same holds for ¬H(Ha), so that given H(¬Ha) and ¬H(Ha)
we would have Ha and ¬Ha, respectively. This obliteration of the ‘internal’ predicate may
make sense, sometimes (see § 3.3), but the stratified cases mentioned in Sect. 1 are pecu-
liar. Here we see that having a certain property is the condition for having the opposite, and
this is why we can accept the inference from (2) or (3) to ‘Ha & ¬Ha’.

3.2 H as Reflexive Property

There is no need to give a general theory of H in this context. We are only interested
in checking whether a minimal but plausible view about H can confirm the account
of happy unhappiness as a sort of stratified contradiction along the suggested lines.
Let us first assume that we are dealing with H as a property of persons. Surely,
this only holds if we conceive H as a metal/existential state, or an emotion, while we
sometimes speak of ‘H’ (and similar properties) as referring to situations, facts, or
acts (see typically the ‘felicity conditions’ of speech acts, or the ‘political happiness’
of societies). Our focus is the instantiation of reflexive cases of the kind (1)-(4), and
normally, as far as we know, only people are capable of reflexive attitudes: there
could be a happy situation, or a happy nation, but not a situation or a nation that is
happy, or unhappy, to be happy, or unhappy.
So, we have the first condition:

(i) the object x that is said to be H (the H-bearer) is a person.

Now we can ask: what is it that makes a person H? what can we assume as
H-maker? As it is normally conceded, a can be H for a variety of reasons, and may
receive happiness from a variety of sources. All the sources and reasons normally
admitted in the literature seem to be plausible H-makers. What we can say altogether
is that there is a variety of putative goods that one may enjoy as sources (reasons) of
H, ranging from positive self-perception, to economic or intellectual or practical or
spiritual or moral flourishing, from the classical eudaimonia (which is possibly the
most general concept), and to the less well-known but equally expressive oikeiosis
(being at ease in the world, which for the Stoics comes from knowing oneself). Finally,
we may move from well-being calculus, as traditionally intended, to the economics of
‘capabilities’ as ‘fundamental entitlements’ (Nussbaum, 2003), or to what Kant con-
ceived as the only ‘moral sentiment’, the respect for oneself and one’s own morality.
We do not need all this, as our aim is the logical form of stratified H, we need
to preserve the general ascription of H without any specific connection with one or

13
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 Philosophia

another theory of H. Thus, we may assume that to be said H, you must minimally
enjoy some unspecified goods (spiritual, psychological, practical, empirical, juridi-
cal, existential), which work as ‘reasons’ for H (Mulligan, 2016: 134–135; see also
Haybron, 2020; and Landau, 2017: Ch. 5). Then we have the second condition:

(ii) x can be said H if x enjoys one or more goods of unspecified nature (such as
health, well-being, intellectual flourishing, public admiration, etc.)

Evidently, (ii) gives the external, objective conditions of H-ascription, but normally,
they are not held sufficient, as people may possess many goods without being (and
being considered) H (and without considering them ‘goods’ at all). No objective collec-
tion of goods seems to provide, as such, a truthmaker for ‘a is H’.20 We should include a
third condition, the subjective part of the story, given by self-evaluation:

(iii) x can be said H if x is aware of possessing one or more goods and evaluates
them altogether or singularly as goods as such, for x and x’s life.

Notably, the basic idea that justifies the subsistence of cases of the kind (2) and (3) is that H
requires self-evaluation, and self-evaluation is iterable: I can evaluate my evaluations, and thus,
I can judge them wrong or right, I can evaluate my state of life (my eudaimonia or my condi-
tion of oikeiosis) but I can also evaluate whether this condition or state is a source of H or not.
Simply, in virtue of (iii) we admit that H postulates reflection. An H person is
aware (in some sense and to some extent) of being H. No happiness without percep-
tion of one’s own happiness. A person reflects on her life (or mental or existential
state) and gives an H-evaluation of it.
What we deal with is that the objective judgement of happiness (whereby ‘a is
H’ is true) is grounded on subjective second order conditions, so that (i) H denotes
the state of mind or state of being of a person; (ii) such a state is grounded on more
or less objectively positive conditions (goods); and (iii) the person evaluates such
conditions as positive source of H. We can also move to the characterization of ¬H
accordingly: ¬Ha will be a person who lacks some (more or less objective) goods,
of whatever kind, and is aware of her own lack as a negative condition.
Now all this given, how can we picture the state of a whose happiness is a source
of unhappiness (or vice versa)?

3.3 Consequences

Some consequences of this threefold characterization deserve to be noted.

20
  For instance, health is an objective good, but it can be a source of unhappiness, say, if it is not accom-
panied by other goods, healthy people may commit suicide for economic defeat. Also plausible is the
case of two brothers: one of them is (apparently) ‘more loved’ by their parents because he is sickly, while
the other is perfectly healthy, so the latter would not appreciate his own health as a ‘good’, but rather, as
a source of unhappiness.

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 Philosophia

First, in virtue of (iii), each ‘good’ would work as a H-source/reason for a only if
it is acknowledged by a as good for her. In this respect, we ought to anticipate each
entry by ‘thinks’, ‘believes’ or ‘feels’:
a is H if a believes/feels to be in good health
a is H if a believes/feels to be successful in her own enterprise/life
a is H if a believes/feels to have what she wants
These evaluations might be wrong (as Mulligan, 2016 stresses): maybe a is
unknowingly ill, her success is only apparent (in fact, if a knew some more details of
the case, she would evaluate her state differently), maybe she believes to have what
in fact she does not (for instance, she believes to have the fidelity of her husband, the
admiration of her employees, etc.). Despite this, a’s situation would work as an exact
truthmaker for Ha.
Second, in virtue of (iii) we admit that H-bearers (persons) must be aware to be
H. Which means, for our concern, that expressions such as:
a is not aware of being H
I was not aware of being H
are inappropriate, or rather: they postulate a different, solely objective, notion of H
(say, as objective well-being, richness, success, eudaimonia, etc.). Our characteriza-
tion is different, as it searches for an objective overall judgement, though grounded
on subjective conditions.21So when someone says: ‘a is not aware of her own H’ or
‘I was not aware of being H’, what she actually means is:
what would make me H is not a source of H for a
what makes me H now was not a source of H for me at that time
Accordingly, when we speak of ‘unaware happiness’ we mean that there are
or there were what we conceive as the conditions of being H: a in our judgement
enjoyed many goods and should be happy to enjoy them, or she ought to love her life
as it is; but these conditions are not or were not active sources of H.
Third, our conception of H as established by (iii) can overcome the difference
between subjective and objective H, as we postulate that H is grounded on objectively
subjective goods: we can acknowledge that a certain condition that we would perceive
as a source of unhappiness can work, for a, in opposite direction, without dispelling
the objective status of overall H-evaluations.22 This works especially in the case of

21
  This approach is typical of a transcendental analysis of anthropological concepts, and it is what a
transcendental (Kant-inspired) view shares with the psychological view. The difference is given by the
method: empirical in the latter case, conceptual (semantic) in the former.
22
  The debate about H-relativeness has been developed in a variety of ways, frequently based on the
so-called ‘hedonic treadmill’, or hedonic adaptation, whereby it is assumed that people tend to maintain
their H-level (‘happiness set point’) at a constant degree, how adverse circumstances might be (Brick-
man et al., 1978). Veenhoven (1991) convincingly shows that similar theories are grounded on mixing
up ‘overall happiness’ with ‘contentment’, and in so doing they disprove the objective status of H and
wellbeing (‘happiness becomes an evasive and inconsequential matter’, Veenhoven, 1991: 32) so that any
welfare concern would be useless and ineffective. See also Bottan and Perez Truglia (2011).

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 Philosophia

Leopardi, as one might possibly say that he was not aware of his own happiness, so
there would not be any contradiction: he was unhappy, period. But if we keep to our
characterization of H, such a view is implausible. In virtue of (iii) we cannot admit of
unaware happiness or unhappiness (see § 3.4).
A fourth consequence is that (iii) justifies the possibility of ‘neither’ people:
people who are not ‘H’ but are not ‘not H’ either, to the extent that they do not
reflect upon their conditions and the goods they have (or lack). In this sense, H
works as a partial predicate, denoting a sparse property. Someone is H, some-
one is not H, someone is neither, for unconscious or indifferent, or because
does not approve of giving special evaluations of the H-sort. A person can be
satisfied by the goods she has, or believes she has, without being strictly H or
non-H.23

3.4 Contradictory H?

As mentioned, our concern is not ‘Leopardi’ as a real historical poet, but the ideal
type we can discover by exploring his case and by accepting Valéry’s diagnosis: the
ideal poet λ, bearer of stratified happiness, whose case is similar to Abigail (α) or
Gilles (γ). Both α and γ are fortunate and unfortunate in virtue of opposite condi-
tions. Accordingly, λ, the happy unhappy poet, was (in hypothesis) happy in author-
ing his poems and essays, but he wrote them just because he was lacking some sub-
jective goods (in Leopardi’s historical case he was alone, ill, forced by his father to
study many hours every day, etc.). And thus, the conditions of his unhappiness were
the same conditions of his happiness.
There is a wide and various literature about depression and negative moods (lack
of goods, unhappiness) at the origin of creativity.24 To the extent that creativity is held
to be a capital condition of H, a certain combination of H and ¬H can be assumed as
ideal-typically distinctive of poetic or artistic lives. What has been advanced in Sect. 2

23
  In fact, in speaking of H people often postulate that a certain emphasis is to be added to the evalua-
tion of the goods one enjoys. The idea of H as sparse property confirms this. For some H-theorists, the
ascription of H to a implies that a’s self-evaluation is not simply ‘positive’, there must be even more
compelling evidence. So, one may say that a further condition is required, thereof: x is to be said H iff x’s
evaluation of her goods is strongly positive, x gives a special positive value to her actual situation (see §
3.4). Some H-makers may be conceived in accordance with this requirement. For instance: ‘loving one’s
own life as it is’. Stated that by ‘love’ we may intend warm acceptance of something or someone, we may
postulate that a condition called H is one, wherein a person is aware of loving her life or her situation,
having a warm acceptance of herself. However, if we substantiated the idea in this way, we would have
the necessary and sufficient reasons for Ha, but we would espouse a particular interpretation of the con-
tents and conditions of H, which is not our strategy here.
24
  See Boden 2004 for a general account, and especially Heilman et  al. 2003  (375–377): ‘Studies of
physiological arousal in depression, as determined by EEG power analysis, have revealed that depressed
patients have reduced arousal that is altered with treatment’. So the authors conclude: ‘If lower levels
of physiological arousal allow one to increase the extent of concept representations, promote divergent
thinking and increase cognitive flexibility, then it would follow that people with depression might have a
propensity to be creative’ (377).

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 Philosophia

is that, in cases in which ¬H is truly the condition of H, or vice versa, there might be
a contradiction, but with a fusion (inseparable unity) of contradictories; the stratifi-
cation brings about a special property, a special sort of inseparable H and ¬H. We
have obtained in the previous sub-sections that H is subjective (it requires a person’s
self-evaluation); it is a multidimensional concept, as different ‘goods’ (subjectively
determined as such) might be reasons for H, in isolation or jointly; and H-evaluations
regard H-bearers’ condition, for the present state or globally.25
What we now must confirm is whether such a characterization of H can justify the
ideas advanced in Sect. 2 in case of λ. Having stated that a collection of givens may
make Ha true, we can express the conditions of H by a set of ­g1, ­g2 … ­gn. (There is no
need to introduce special technicalities, or some ‘H-calculus’ to justify (2) and (3) as
correct state descriptions.) A possible diagnosis could be thus to state that some g­ i in
a’s postulated set of conditions is a’s unhappiness, and a’s evaluation of her own condi-
tion as ¬Ha becomes a good, as far as it prepares the conditions for Ha. In this sense,
the negative mood that is caused by the self-aware lack of some perceived goods is
the H-maker for a, what makes a H. In case of λ, we would have that if λ is aware that
­gi (his unhappiness) is the condition of his creativity, and if his creativity makes him
happy, then he would be happy to be unhappy, in at least subjectively justified sense.26
Now the already mentioned strategies to dissolve the contradiction seem arguable. One
may parametrize the incompatibles, stating that λ is H as a poet, but ¬H as a human being.
Generally, parametrizations, or ‘non-adjunctive’ treatments of contradictions, are very intui-
tive, and adaptable to many cases of cognitive dissonances: it is assumed that ‘p’ is true in a
certain respect, for a certain time in a certain world or according to a certain story, and ‘not
p’ is true, but in another time, world, or story. But this interpretation is hardly applicable to
our case. First, the opposite properties we are speaking about are instantiated by the same
object in the same world (ideally, the actual world), and they belong to the (more or less
fictional) object, according to the same story. Second, the parametrized state description will
not capture the mutual modification of the two properties, the paradox whereby having ¬H
is the condition of having H, even if H in principle should exclude ¬H.27
Another alternative strategy is to suggest that λ is able to transform his own lack
into a positive good, so that λ deserves to be called definitely and altogether H, hap-
piness is dominant. The idea is typical of all those positions that stress the possibility
of ‘overturning’ bad into good, and in this dialectic, a would judge her failures as
indirect sources of success, and hence of H, and as such, not as failures but as steps

25
  As suggested in the note 20, possibly (but not necessarily), being H requires feeling categorical and
profound wellbeing, i.e. loving one’s own life as it is.
26
  We can say that can be ‘rationally’ said H when we can understand the reasons why he believes he is H.
So as feels or believes to be H for reasons we are able to understand, as generated by givens (such as author-
ing marvellous poems) that are unquestionably ‘goods’ for us, then his self-evaluation is ‘rationally’ plausible.

27
  Not only that, it is generally admitted that the property of being a poet (an artist) is not perceived
by its bearers as firmly distinct from being a human being. Being an artist is not generally conceived
as being a professional in some activity, say a plumber, or a postal clerk: it is intended to have an onto-
logical impact. Being a poet (especially in Leopardi’s time) is what has been called, from Kierkegaard
onward, an ‘existential status’, a way of being ‘human’ for a human being. So one cannot distinguish H as
a poet and H as a human being, as both are one and the same, actually and ideally.

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 Philosophia

towards H.28 These intuitions are not applicable to our case (and to other stratified
incompatibles), because the negative side (unhappiness) is the permanent cause of
the positive. If λ were to experiment some failure, λ would become unhappy, and,
simultaneously, would become happy to be unhappy, but being aware that his ¬H is
the source of H, he will appreciate his own H as a good. As there is mutual implica-
tion, like in the Liar’s case, we cannot say there is real dominance of H or ¬H, no
more than can we say the Liar’s sentence is dominantly true or dominantly false.
Alternatively, a dynamic interpretation of the contradiction would state that λ’s
H-state is oscillating, or he is (believes to be) sometimes H or ¬H, but we cannot say
he is definitely H, nor can we say he is definitely ¬H. Our idealtypical poet λ would
perceive himself as enjoying a fundamental good (creativity) in the act of writing,
and in evaluating his own products; immediately after, he would perceive that his
own unhappiness is the condition of his H, so he would remember his own lack of
goods and his miserable condition, but he will in turn be aware that this unhappy
state is the condition of being the artist that he is. H and ¬H would be intended as
belonging to distinct temporal slices, so that we cannot ascribe to λ’s overall state
one or the other property. The contradiction would no longer be a contradiction of
the form ‘Hλ ∧ ¬Hλ’.
The dynamic interpretation has some plausibility. Many authors believe that
Liar-like contradictions, releasing biconditionals of the form α ↔ ¬α, do not bring
about any effective (metaphysical) dialetheia, viz. a true proposition of the form α
∧ ¬α.29 However, even the supporters of this dynamic view may concede that the
bi-conditional form, capturing the mutual implication of contradictories, is a form
of contradiction. If not else, it satisfies the ‘Aristotelian challenge’, i.e. the meta-
contradiction, whereby in a true contradiction we should have the joint subsistence
of two incompatibles, two items that cannot jointly subsist. Whether the jointness
is to be interpreted in terms of static factual conjunction or mutual implication (or
as an ‘and’ inferred from a mutual implication, in virtue of the Excluded Middle) is
still up for debate (see Authors 2020 and Ficara, 2021).
In any case, dynamic or static parametrizations do not seem applicable to the
mentioned cases of Leopardi, Abigail and Gilles. As I have repeatedly mentioned,
in these cases, as well as in the Liar’s case, we have opposites (the extension and the
anti-extension of a property) which work as mutual modifiers, so that one subsists in
virtue of the other: the Liar’s sentence is true in virtue of its falsity, just like Leop-
ardi is happy in virtue of his unhappiness, and Abigail has become fortunate thanks
to her unfortunate condition, while Gilles is an unfortunate knower just because he
has been fortunate knower (and vice versa).
In this sense, we can say we have one person with two properties, one state of
affairs joining properties which work as mutual modifiers; and the properties are so
closely intertwined in virtue of their mutual action that one can say there is only one

28
  Clearly the same holds for the opposite interpretation, in case of unhappy happiness: a person who is
unhappy to be happy may be seen as a person who turns positive into negative, unhappiness is dominant.
The case, I claim, is equally unapplicable to.
29
  The argument from to has been discussed in various ways (see Scharp 2013); more specifically,
there are reasons to believe it does not work in case of empirical or value properties (Authors 2020).

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 Philosophia

property, made of incompatible sub-properties, in stratified form. Leopardi as well

as Abigail and Gilles, and not unlike the Liar’s sentence ‘μ’, can be seen as typi-
cal bearers of one special property made of joint incompatibles. There is negation,
intended as marking the anti-extension of happiness, fortune or truth (what is not
true, not fortunate, not happy), but there is no exclusion-negation (and no falsity as
truth of negation), as λ and similar objects are located at the border between having
and not having fortune or happiness, so jointly and not separately having both, one
property and its negative correlate.30

Acknowledgements  The general theory of ‘true contradictions’ underlying the article has been signifi-
cantly improved over time by confrontations with JC Beall, Elena Ficara, Neri Marsili, Graham Priest,
Achille Varzi, Francesco Berto. I am deeply grateful to Juliette Weyand and Fiammetta Fazio, who have
given important contributions, especially for the analysis developed in section  3. I also ought to thank
Giorgio Ficara and two anonymous referees for useful insights, objections and suggestions

Funding Open access funding provided by Università degli Studi di Milano within the CRUI-CARE
Agreement.

Declarations 

Conflict of Interest  The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,
which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long
as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Com-
mons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article
are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the
material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not
permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly
from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://​creat​iveco​mmons.​org/​licen​ses/​by/4.​0/.

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