"Man does not strive after happiness; only the Englishman does that," wrote Nietzsche in The Twilight of the Idols. It's a fair bet that the old misery-guts would have hated the launch of Action for Happiness, the self-styled "new mass movement to create a happier society". The rest of us, though, might be rather more welcoming – albeit cautious about the happiness movement's terms and objectives.

It should be admitted at the outset that Action for Happiness offers latter-day sceptics (whether following Nietzsche or not) plenty of targets to have a pop at. There is the grandiosity of that self-description – splendidly undercut by the prosaicness of the "twenty practical actions for happiness", which urges people to hug each other, exercise more often and say thank you more often.

So far, so fluffy. But there is more substance to the happiness movement, as evidenced by the people behind it – including the LSE economist Richard Layard, and Geoff Mulgan, the former director of the government's strategy unit. There is also serious academic research into how and when we are happy, whether by economists such as Andrew Oswald, David Blanchflower and Richard Easterlin, or psychologists such as Jonathan Haidt. Finally, the argument that there is more to a flourishing society than ever-increasing national income is also gaining ground among policymakers. David Cameron used to talk about GWB, or general wellbeing; Nicolas Sarkozy has commissioned Nobel laureates Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz to explore how to include wellbeing in measures of economic performance.

Happiness, flourishing, wellbeing: these terms are used interchangeably by many of those in the happiness movement, but they all mean subtly different things. And that is one problem with those who would wish to include measures of wellbeing in policymaking: it is hard to pin down what they wish to measure. That need not be fatal: happiness economics is an infant discipline, and is still working out such questions. But if a bunch of academics and government advisers decided what they meant by happiness and how to have more of it, they would be deemed patrician – and rightly so.

Happiness, as Nietzsche could have told you, only became a policy goal after the Enlightenment – when the US constitution laid down the right to pursue happiness. Ever since, it has borne a whiff of consumerist self-indulgence, and its advocates then and now are accused of prizing sensation over anything more profound or ostensibly value-laden. That is a serious question, and one that the happiness advocates need to address. Finding the answer may be more painful than pleasurable.