Reasoning & Happiness, Gibran's Painting

Contemplating on my essay question.

Q: The philosophes of the French Enlightenment claimed that through reason and science individuals are more happy and humane.

I havent examined the humane and scientific aspect of it as yet but I have thought about whether reason makes us more happy as individuals. After several chats with my friends I came to realize that we firstly need to define what we mean by reason. In most cases reasoning can be understood as something that justifies an act. When we contemplated on how much an act could be justifiable my friends and I had opposing views. For some, reasoning can be understood as the suppression of emotions and simply deducing what "logically" makes sense. Thus, understanding that anything that makes sense is the "correct" act. Through some reflection I realized that just because something might seem logical it does not mean that it is correct, it doesnt always justify the act. My friend then brought up the concept of emotional rationalization, which at first I thought was a joke and an oxymoron. It turns out that there is such a concept. Emotional rationalization seeks to make decisions based on what one feels. Allowing those feelings to engage in the decision process and enabling an individual to use both the mind and the emotions to justify the act. Im sure there is more to this concept and it should be explored further. For the time being ill get back to my question, does reasoning make people more happy? I believe that when emotions are taken out of the equation it automatically reduces the possibility for an individual to be happy on the other hand I believe that if one is to solemnly make decisions on emotions this could also lead to the extreme opposite. I dont know if reasoning has made people more happy than they were previously (this is assuming that people back in the day didn't use reasoning which is another discussion on its own) but to some extent one can state that perhaps it wont make you happier because if we understood reasoning by the first definition given then by default removing oneself from the emotion that brings about happiness can lead one to be less happy. This then brings us to ask what is happiness ...oh man, this is gonna be a long essay. More thoughts on this later.