The Quest for Happiness

To answer his question, Qoheleth does not reason as a theorist: he runs an experiment. As a king who has everything at his disposal, he tries in turn what people believe capable of filling a life, wisdom, pleasure, great works, wealth, to see whether any of them finally gives the meaning he seeks. Each time, he tastes it fully, then draws up the account. And each time the same conclusion falls: it was only a chasing after the wind.

The king’s experiment

Qoheleth’s originality is to affirm nothing he has not tested. He presents himself as a king with everything at his disposal, able to carry to the end an experiment no ordinary man could attempt: to try, one after another, all the goods thought desirable, and to measure what they truly give. He gives himself to it deliberately, with all his heart, not out of frivolity but to know what is good for a person to do during the few days of his life. And he notes that he keeps, all the while, the mastery of his reason: this is not a man who loses himself in pleasure, but a sage who coldly observes the effect of each thing upon him. He takes his own life for a laboratory, and records, with relentless honesty, what remains when the pleasure has subsided.

Wisdom and pleasure

He begins with what he holds highest, wisdom itself. He applies himself to know wisdom and folly, and he discovers that wisdom has its reverse side: “with much wisdom comes much sorrow, and whoever increases knowledge increases grief.” Ecclesiastes 1:18 The wise man sees further, so he suffers more; and above all, in the end, he dies like the fool: “The wise die just like the fool.” Ecclesiastes 2:16 Neither leaves a lasting memory, both will be alike forgotten. This is why wisdom, precious as it is, does not by itself give the profit sought. Then Qoheleth turns to pleasure: he tastes wine, laughter, feasting, while keeping, he says, the mastery of his heart, to see whether the joy of the senses fills a person. But of laughter he says that it is a madness, and of pleasure: what is the use? Pleasure numbs without filling; it passes, and leaves the heart as empty as before.

Great works and wealth

He then attempts what lasts at least a little: the work of his hands. He builds himself houses, plants vineyards, lays out gardens and parks, digs pools to water his forests; he gathers silver and gold, flocks, singers, men and women, all that makes the delight of kings. He becomes greater than all who were before him in Jerusalem, and his wisdom remains with him. Nothing his eyes desire does he refuse himself. Then comes the moment of reckoning, and he falls back: “all was breath and a chasing after the wind; there is no profit under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 2:11 One care above all poisons all these works, that of the death which will tear them from his hands: “I hated too all the toil at which I had labored under the sun, since I must leave its fruit to the one who comes after me.” Ecclesiastes 2:18 He does not know whether that heir will be wise or foolish, and even his memory will fade: the work outlives him, but it is already no longer his.

All a chasing after the wind

From the whole experiment the same image returns: a chasing after the wind. To chase the wind is to want to grasp what by nature cannot be held in the hand: the tighter one grips, the more it escapes. Each of these goods is real, and Qoheleth does not despise them; but none is God, and the heart made for the infinite cannot rest in the finite. Here is the secret of his happy failure: by showing that nothing "under the sun" gives the profit sought, Qoheleth does not destroy the desire for happiness, he shifts it. Since nothing that passes fills, one must seek elsewhere, on the side of what does not pass. The emptiness of the mist becomes the hollow of an expectation.