The question of happiness and the rise of philosopher queen in Tanzania

One of the most recognisable ideas of the great philosopher Plato is that of the philosopher king. Plato argued that, ideally, states should be ruled by philosophers who combine love for wisdom with political skill.

Citizens in states so ruled by philosophers would be the happiest. Aristotle, another great philosopher, spent a great deal of time thinking about happiness.

According to him, “happiness is the ultimate goal of life.” For Plato, a “philosopher king is a type of ruler who gained leadership knowledge through philosophical training. The question I ask myself, and I am probably not the first one to do so, is, ‘Why did Plato term the ideal leader a philosopher king and not a philosopher queen or simply a philosopher?’

I suspect that part of the answer lies in the fact that, for a long time in history, only men were getting the chance to rule, and even philosophical studies were seen as being fit only for male students.

In today’s world, the situation is different. We have been witnessing a significant increase in female students’ enrollment in various universities all over the world, including in philosophy.

Professor Schwitzgebel writes that in the United States between 2017 and 2020, 42 percent of graduates with a second major in philosophy were women, compared to 36 percent of graduates whose only or primary major was philosophy. 

In Tanzania, teaching of philosophy in public universities is still in its infancy, but at the University of Dar es Salaam, the number of students registering to study philosophy is increasing every year since 2015, when philosophy began to be offered as a full-fledged degree programme and not just a service course, as was the case previously.

The percentage of female graduates in philosophy has increased from 0 percent in 2018 to 54.39 percent in 2022. Now back to the concept of happiness. Looking at Tanzania’s rank in the world happiness index, I noticed that the country has been ranked among the ten unhappiest countries in the world for six consecutive years, from 2015 to 2021.

The happiness index is based on a survey of people’s quality of life, and the scores are ranked from 0 (unhappy) to 10 (happy). From my point of view, what determines true happiness is not the possession of material things or the quality of a country’s infrastructure, but the tranquility of the souls.

Tranquility of the soul, I think, is what makes a person see the reason to continue living. It may sound paradoxical, but there is a possibility that a country can have good infrastructure, such as good roads and better social services like hospitals, but its people might not have a sense of belonging to that infrastructure just because they are not happy.

Since a philosopher king or queen is responsible for bringing happiness to the citizenry, happiness is the ultimate goal of life, and the soul is the principal of life as Aristotle postulates, I can therefore conclude that happiness is equal to the tranquility of the soul.

Considering the notions of the philosopher’s stone, happiness, and quality of life, I come to recognize that there is a very strong relationship between them.

I am optimistic that Tanzania, with its growing number of female philosophy graduates, will generate a lot of philosopher queens.

But I hesitate to say that philosophical training at the university level is the only way to become a philosopher king or queen.

Philosophical training is also obtainable in other environments, from experienced people, sages, and gurus. Since the current president of Tanzania, Dr Samia Suluhu Hassan, has come to power, there has been an increase in the country’s happiness index score, from 3.23 in 2019 to 3.62 in 2020 to 3.70 in 2021. Her leadership approach has a philosophical direction and has increased happiness for Tanzanians.

She has been using philosophical arguments to give Tanzanians hope, to encourage love, to emphasize equal opportunities for all, to heal the emotionally wounded by applying emotional intelligence, and to bring back lost relationships and establish new relationships with other countries.

I dare to say that President Hassan, is a philosopher queen, and she should be a role model not only for Tanzanian women, but also for Tanzanian men and Africans at large.