>I'd move mirth to the first one

Interesting. I'm not a native English speaker and the word mirth came into my vocabulary via G.K.Chesterton (Christian thinker) where it is most definitely in the second category. But looking at the dictionary, yeah, I think you're right. Must be a particular use of the word in Chesterton.

Whenever this discussion comes up, I get the feeling that 'happiness' must be defined beforehand. I say this because you seem to be talking about two forms of what may be called happiness. There is happiness as in joy, excitement, pleasure; and then there's happiness as in mirth, fulfillment, contentment, peace. The interviewee touches on this extremely briefly:

>There are two types of happiness: lowercase and uppercase.

He goes on to say

>But since the 18th century we have become aware of another kind, a social, public happiness, the only one in which we can agree, which leads us to ask: in what model do we want to live?

So he's addressing mostly this third kind of happiness, and hence why he does not cover the distinction you're addressing. It's this 'social happiness' that has become trendy in his opinion.

He's not saying anything remotely new, by the way. He's basically echoing Augustine, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and so on down the existential tree...