Adaora I Onaga
As a new academic session begins, our campuses come alive once again. Freshly admitted students arrive with dreams and determination. Returning students set themselves new academic targets, perhaps a first-class degree, a leadership role, or simply the resolve to do better than last year. Faculty members prepare lectures and research projects, while other staff members organise themselves to face the familiar rhythm of registration, meetings, deadlines, and the events that keep a university running.
Despite our different roles, we are all driven by something remarkably similar: the desire to build a good life. Whether we are choosing a degree programme, applying for a grant, accepting a promotion, selecting a research collaborator, or deciding how to spend our time, beneath every decision lies a profoundly human question: How can I be happy?
Today, happiness is often portrayed as an acquisition project. We imagine that greater fulfilment lies just beyond that next achievement, whether it is a degree, a publication, a pay increase, or just a larger office. Yet experience tells a different story. The excitement of one achievement quickly gives way to the pursuit of another. Psychologists describe this as the hedonic treadmill: yesterday’s dream becomes today’s normal. We should be people who dream, and the problem is not ambition itself. Universities should be places of excellence, innovation, and aspiration. The difficulty arises when we expect external achievements to satisfy that infinite desire for human happiness.
More than two thousand years ago, Aristotle offered a remarkably enduring insight. He used the word eudaimonia, often translated simply as “happiness,” but more accurately understood as human flourishing. For Aristotle, flourishing was not a passing emotion or a reward for accumulated achievements. It was an active way of living, a life shaped by excellence of character. This is where ethics enters the picture.
Unfortunately, ethics often suffers from an image problem. Mention the word and many people immediately think of policies, compliance forms, sanctions, and a list of forbidden behaviour. Ethics can unhappily sound like the department of ‘No’, ‘Not now’, ‘Not ever’. However, that philosophical speciality of ethics, despite all the misunderstandings, is deeper and richer. It is not primarily about avoiding wrongdoing; it is about becoming the kind of person who naturally chooses what is good and thus achieves fulfilment.
Just as a musician develops mastery through years of disciplined practice, or a footballer refines their skills through relentless training, human excellence is cultivated through the repeated practice of virtues such as honesty, courage, justice, humility, generosity, and responsibility. Ethics, then, is a blueprint for becoming an excellent human being.
During the Institute of Humanities Conference at Pan-Atlantic University last year, Patrick Awuah, President of Ashesi University, invited participants to consider a fascinating thought experiment. Imagine two societies. In the first, everyone is trustworthy. People keep their promises, serve one another, work diligently, treat others fairly, and contribute to the common good. In the second, dishonesty, exploitation, corruption, and selfishness are the norm. Trust has collapsed, and every interaction is marked by suspicion. The question is obvious: In which society are people more likely to flourish?
The answer reminds us that ethics is far more than a private concern. It is the foundation upon which flourishing individuals, thriving institutions, and prosperous societies are built. Universities play a pivotal role in building that infrastructure. Every time a student acknowledges a source rather than plagiarise, character is being formed, happiness is being constructed. Every time a lecturer admits uncertainty and seeks the truth instead of pretending to know, or an administrator chooses fairness over convenience, the university becomes more than a place where knowledge is transmitted. It becomes a place where people are taught to be happy.
The remarkable irony is that such choices can feel costly in the moment. Integrity sometimes demands more effort than shortcuts. Honesty may seem less rewarding than its alternative. Service often requires sacrifice. Yet these are precisely the habits that make genuine flourishing possible.
As the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl observed, happiness cannot be pursued as an end in itself; it ensues from committing oneself to something meaningful beyond oneself. The same could be said of ethics. Those who genuinely strive to become truthful, just, courageous, and generous gradually discover that happiness arrives almost unnoticed.
Happiness and ethics are not competing pursuits but different ways of describing the same lifelong journey of actualising our human nature. As another academic year begins, perhaps the most important question is not simply, what do I hope to achieve this session? But who am I becoming in the process? How am I constructing my happiness and that of others?
If our universities can help students and staff answer the latter two questions well, they will do far more than produce employable graduates or accomplished scholars. They will help form men and women of character who possess not only the competence to succeed, but also the wisdom and integrity to flourish and to enable others to flourish with them.