Happiness

– develop self-knowledge [Socrates] – cultivate internal harmony [Plato] – foster virtue through habit [Aristotle] – cultivate and appreciate true friendship [Cicero] – recognize what is and is not in your control [Epictetus].

If someone is happy about a certain politician’s death, you might think that their happiness is inappropriate. Likewise, perhaps your pension fund is changed in some way: this might seem to give you good grounds for unhappiness. Cases like these support the more general idea that happiness can be more or less appropriate, depending on what it is directed at. This book investigates happiness, and this norm governing it. It discusses the nature of happiness, the “fittingness” norm governing it, and (...) the general significance of such fittingness norms. It argues that happiness is an emotion, and one that is uniquely important. It argues that happiness is more fitting when it is directed at good things, and likewise that sadness is more fitting when directed at bad things. And it argues that such norms of fittingness can be explained, and explained in a way that grounds their special significance: they are not easily outweighed by competing considerations such as wellbeing. Along the way, the book discusses many related topics, such as hedonic adaptation, and the comparisons we make that affect our happiness. Whether you should be happy or sad with your lot is a central human question, and this book provides the framework needed to answer it. (shrink)

This paper introduces thrivality as a conceptual refinement within the discourse of human flourishing. While eudaemonia has historically denoted an optimal moral or psychological state — the fulfillment of one’s nature through reason and virtue — thrivality names something quieter and more resilient: the capacity not merely to flourish under ideal conditions, but to continue being under suboptimal ones. Thrivality concerns persistence, adaptation, and soft resistance — a kind of existential photosynthesis through adversity. It is not the moralised striving of (...) flourishing but the ecological tenacity of life itself: the dandelion through concrete, the pulse beneath fatigue. This paper argues that thrivality deserves taxonomical distinction from flourishing, as it prioritises continuity over optimisation and survival’s dignity over perfection’s promise. By grounding this term, I aim to expand our ethical vocabulary for discussing resilience, especially in contexts where ideal flourishing is structurally or circumstantially impossible. (shrink)

In an important and widely discussed series of studies, Jonathan Phillips and colleagues have suggested that the ordinary concept of happiness has a substantial moral component. For in- stance, two persons who enjoy the same extent of positive emotions and are equally satisfied with their lives are judged as happy to different degrees if one is less moral than the other. Considering that the relation between morality and happiness or self-interest has been one of the central questions of moral philosophy (...) since at least Plato, such a result would be of considerable philosophical interest. On closer examination of the original research and new studies, we suggest that the data point to a different conclusion: in the dominant folk understanding of happiness, morality has no fundamental role. Findings seeming to indicate a moralized concept are better explained, we suggest, by folk theories on which extreme moral turpitude indicates that an individual suffers from psychological dysfunction. (shrink)

The concept of a good life is usually assumed by philosophers to be equivalent to that of well-being, or perhaps of a morally good life, and hence has received little attention as a potentially distinct subject matter. In a series of experiments participants were presented with vignettes involving socially sanctioned wrongdoing toward outgroup members. Findings indicated that, for a large majority, judgments of bad character strongly reduce ascriptions of the good life, while having no impact at all on ascriptions of (...) happiness or well-being. Taken together with earlier findings these results suggest that the lay concept of a good life is clearly distinct from those of happiness, well-being, or morality , likely encompassing both morality and well-being, and perhaps other values as well: whatever matters in a person’s life. Importantly, morality appears not to play a fundamental role in either happiness or well-being among the folk. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s psychological theory of the drives calls into question two common assumptions of ideology critique: 1) that ideology is fetishistic, substituting false satisfactions for true ones, and 2) that ideology is falsification; it conceals exploitation. In contrast, a Nietzschean approach begins from the truth of ideology: that capitalism produces an authentic contentment that makes the concealment of exploitation unnecessary. And it critiques ideology from the same standpoint: capitalism produces pleasures too efficiently, an overproduction of desire that is impossible to sustain (...) indefinitely. Nietzsche’s concept of the drives (Trieben) is grounded in his theory of the will to power. In contrast to Freud’s view that drives aim at satiation, pleasure through stimulus reduction, in Nietzsche’s view, they aim primarily at the “feeling of power” and the “happiness of high tension.” Nietzsche sees the desire for satiation as a symptom of weakness, a secondary, contingent aim that is incompatible with the fundamental drive to sustain and heighten the feeling of tension that accompanies strong desire. While the Freudian subject desires satisfaction, the Nietzschean subject is paradoxically frustrated by satisfaction, finding happiness in desire sustained by resistance and tension. If individuals desire desire as such, then exploitation and immiseration are not necessarily incompatible with their happiness. Consequently, we must reject the view that ideology is fetishistic: capitalism does not depend on an ersatz satisfaction in the commodity, a transferal of value from quality to quantity, use value to exchange value. Capitalism authentically satisfies desire precisely through its exploitative economic structure. The independence and unpredictability of the value of commodities and the immiseration of laborers produces discontents that enhance rather than frustrate desire. By continually introducing new, initially inaccessible commodities, then overcoming their inaccessibility through overproduction, capitalism sustains and intensifies desires. It promotes happiness not by satisfying wants but generating them, feeding the desire for desire, for the intensity of feeling that the brief pleasures of satiation would destroy. The commodity is not, then, a fetish, not a false satisfaction or aim, but a means, a prop that supports and sustains satisfaction as continued desire. Consequently, we must also reject the view that ideology is falsification: capitalism’s efficient production of happiness obviates the need to conceal its nature. Individuals tolerate capitalism not out of ignorance of exploitation but indifference to it; they prefer real happiness to a merely possible justice that might come at its expense. The critique of ideology must begin by acknowledging its truth. Rather than deny the real satisfactions of capitalism, it must demonstrate that they are unsustainable. (shrink)

The argument in this essay will be divided into two parts: utilitarian and virtue ethics, where each party will agree or disagree with the idea that self-deception leads to happiness, taking climate change and meat production as examples to support their claims.

In philosophy happiness occupies a dominant position. From the beginning of philosophy, we find the scholarly engagement of philosophers in search of happiness for human being. It is actually a perennial search of mankind throughout history. My attempt in this paper is to become a part of that august journey. I will try to focus some points in my paper. At first, I will try to give an analytic presentation about the nature of happiness with references to different philosophers and (...) philosophical schools. In this part I will attempt to find out the root causes of the changing patterns of happiness by maintaining a chronological order. In the next part I will try to depict some significant debates regarding the pursuit of happiness. The question of enigma and reality will be dealt here in a comparative fashion. And finally, I will try to give some recommendations and suggestions for a happy life.As this is a qualitative work, here I confine myself within some relevant textbooks of philosophy and recent research articles on the pursuit of happiness. Content analysis, comparative discussion with a critical outlook and philosophical speculation will be within the research methodology of the paper. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#71-72; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2022 P 129-151. (shrink)

Humans have a strong tendency to hedonically adapt to their circumstances, so that something that once brought joy eventually brings only indifference. Does this tendency guarantee a kind of failure on our part? Happiness, like other emotions, seems subject to evaluation in terms of its fittingness. But it’s not clear how hedonic adaptation could possibly maintain fittingness: it involves changing one’s level of happiness in a way that doesn’t track the absolute goodness of one’s circumstances. This paper mounts a defence (...) of hedonic adaptation against this concern. It does so by articulating a key difference between the scale of happiness and the scale of goodness, and shows how that difference guarantees an inability to track absolute levels of goodness with our levels of happiness. Given this background constraint, hedonic adaptation may be the most appropriate way for our happiness to change over time. (shrink)

The VIA Inventory of Strengths and the VIA model were originally developed to assess and study 24 character strengths. In this paper, I discuss how the VIA Inventory and its character strength model can be applied to the field of moral education with moral philosophical considerations. First, I review previous factor analysis studies that have consistently reported factors containing candidates for moral virtues, and discuss the systematic structure and organization of VIA character strengths. Second, I discuss several issues related to (...) the VIA model, including a lack of previous studies that directly support the moral justifiability of the model and the presence of a fundamental virtue component required for optimal moral functioning in virtue ethics, phronesis, practical wisdom, in the model. Finally, I propose future directions for research on the VIA model in order to address the aforementioned issues and facilitate the application of the model in moral education. (shrink)

There are roughly two philosophical literatures on “happiness,” each corresponding to a different sense of the term. One uses ‘happiness’ as a value term, roughly synonymous with well-being or flourishing. The other body of work uses the word as a purely descriptive psychological term, akin to ‘depression’ or ‘tranquility’. An important project in the philosophy of happiness is simply getting clear on what various writers are talking about: what are the important meanings of the term and how do they connect? (...) While the “well-being” sense of happiness receives significant attention in the contemporary literature on well-being, the psychological notion is undergoing a revival as a major focus of philosophical inquiry, following on recent developments in the science of happiness. This entry focuses on the psychological sense of happiness (for the well-being notion, see the entry on well-being). The main accounts of happiness in this sense are hedonism, the life satisfaction theory, and the emotional state theory. Leaving verbal questions behind, we find that happiness in the psychological sense has always been an important concern of philosophers. Yet the significance of happiness for a good life has been hotly disputed in recent decades. Further questions of contemporary interest concern the relation between the philosophy and science of happiness, as well as the role of happiness in social and political decision-making. (shrink)

Evidence shows that people have multiple time-biases. One is near-bias, another is future-bias, and a third is present-bias. Philosophers have argued that, in part, the normative status of these biases depends on the extent to which they tend to promote, or frustrate, wellbeing, where “wellbeing” is taken to be of fundamental value. Since near-bias is thought to be associated with impulsivity, lack of self-control, and poor long-term health and financial outcomes, it has often been supposed that it is associated with (...) lower wellbeing and is therefore rationally impermissible. By contrast, philosophical views about the normative status of future-bias have been mixed, with some arguing that future-bias is impermissible because it frustrates wellbeing, and others arguing that it is at least permissible (and perhaps obligatory) because it is the product of mechanisms whose functioning can be expected to promote wellbeing. However, to date, there are no studies that directly probe how time-biases correlate with wellbeing. We empirically investigate which biases promote or frustrate wellbeing. We find no evidence that near-bias or present-bias frustrate wellbeing, but future-bias is associated with higher measures of wellbeing on several measures. (shrink)

I offer four reasons for students to improve their character traits.

This article examines the philosophical concept of happiness and its connection to the concept of time. The concept of happiness is one of the oldest concepts in philosophy. Accordingly, the article begins by examining the historical context of ‘happiness’. It then goes on to explore the ‘form of happiness’, identifying subjective and objective concepts of happiness and also taking into account the psychological interpretation of the concept. Finally, the article considers the temporal dimension of ‘happiness’.

This chapter will introduce everyday aesthetics and conceptions of happiness, explore their interconnections, and indicate some ways they might relate to depression. I introduce the main claims and concerns of everyday aesthetics and illustrate these with examples from the Indian, Chinese, and Japanese philosophical traditions. I then consider two popular accounts of happiness – ‘hedonic’ and ‘life-satisfaction’ theories – and offer an alternative phenomenological account of happiness. Aesthetic appreciation and agency and happiness, it is argued, depend on a phenomenologically fundamental (...) capacity to experience different kinds of significant possibility. It is the loss or disruption of that capacity which characterises experiences of depression. (shrink)

The two main subjectivist accounts of wellbeing, hedonism and desire-satisfactionism, focus on pleasure and desire (respectively) as the subjective states relevant to evaluating the goodness of a life. In this paper, I argue that another type of subjective state, mood, is much more central to wellbeing. After a general characterization of some central features of mood (§1), I argue that the folk concept of happiness construes it in terms of preponderance of good mood (§2). I then leverage this connection between (...) mood and happiness to argue that having certain mood patterns in one’s life is sufficient for having a good life (§3), and explore their potential necessity for a good life (§4). I close with discussion of the role that mood patterns might play within the three leading philosophical theories of wellbeing: hedonism (§5), desire-satisfactionism (§6), and objective-list theory (§7). (shrink)

This article intends to demonstrate that Seneca associates involuntary affections with the self (principale/hēgemonikon) and the body in different ways. He distinguishes strict bodily affections from cognitive affections. The former originate in the body and are merely experienced by the self, whereas the latter result from an assent-independent cognitive activity that usually provokes a bodily reaction and is the starting point for developing emotions. Seneca describes this activity as "capere", a concept that has no precedent in the intellectual history of (...) Stoicism. It is an unconscious evaluation occurring in both animals and humans. Letter 92 also provides valuable insights into the embodied self’s relation to affections and emotions. Seneca presents here a psychological model that is much more Stoic than previously recognized. In this context, the article’s main argument is that a connection exists between his acceptance of a twofold irrational component of the self and his two types of affections. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas was one of the greatest philosophers and theologians of the medieval period, and his account of happiness is one of the most influential in the Western tradition. For Aquinas, happiness is the final end and highest good that all of us seek in life. But not everyone agrees about what makes human beings happy. This piece is an exposition and commentary on Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, Part I-II, Question 2, which asks the question: What does happiness consist in? What (...) is the final end and highest good that fulfills our human nature and satisfies our desires? Aquinas examines various answers, including wealth, honor, fame, glory, power, pleasure, life, health, knowledge, and virtue. He argues that none of these things can make us perfectly happy, and that true and perfect happiness is found in God alone. (shrink)

The article proposes a formal semantics of happiness and sadness modalities in the imperfect information setting. It shows that these modalities are not definable through each other and gives a sound and complete axiomatization of their properties.

Ethics is a set of values, living which the individual comes to flourish in harmony with society and nature. While society is a creation of language and technology, happiness is a function of ethical living. Artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and nanotechnology have opened up new possibilities for human happiness. Along with these disruptive technologies, market-driven competition and democratic aspirations of people have caused new dilemmas and questions that require global conversation involving all stakeholders. Advaita, the non-dualist system of Indian philosophy is (...) a worldview and value system drawn from the collective wisdom of India. Advaita ethics can contribute positively to the emerging global dialogue. (shrink)

What constitutes a “good” life—not necessarily a morally good life, but a life that is good for the person who lived it? In response to this question of “well-being," philosophers have offered three significant answers: A good life is one in which a person can satisfy their desires (“Desire-Satisfaction” or “Preferentism”), one that includes certain good features (“Objectivism”), or one in which pleasurable states dominate or outweigh painful ones (“Hedonism”). To adjudicate among these competing theories, moral philosophers traditionally gather data (...) from thought experiments and intuition. In this chapter, we supplement that traditional approach with a pair of experimental studies that examine whether the three theories reflect laypeople’s intuitions about well-being. The empirical studies yield two primary findings. First, they provide evidence for lay "well-being pluralism": laypeople treat desire satisfaction, positive objective conditions, and happiness as all constitutive of well-being. Second, the studies provide evidence of "hedonic dominance": laypeople evaluate an individual’s happiness as more important to an individual’s overall well-being than desire satisfaction or objective conditions. (shrink)

This chapter reconstructs Schelling’s so-called identity philosophy as a speculative solar thought and an antagonistic attempt to re-vision the universe, against the logics of self-assertion and appropriation, as one blissful being-in-common. In bliss, the world’s enclosures and divisions are annihilated, dissolved as in water and consumed as in revolutionary fire—the fire that, for Schelling, is one with the solar fire repressed within the earth. However, as part of his identity philosophy, Schelling also develops an aesthetic theodicy of history that indifferently (...) assigns to everything its place within the All and sees no evil, and that explicitly legitimates Christian-European colonialism. Not only does Schelling position the Christian-European subject as the normative subject of planetary history but his very construction of concepts such as “history” and “religion” is programmatically Christian-modern in character. In the end, the chapter suggests, Schelling’s identity philosophy collapses due to the apocalyptic tension between theodicy and bliss. (shrink)

In dialogue with Hans Blumenberg’s account of modernity, Christianity, and Gnosticism, this chapter traces the contours of the Christian-modern world in Schelling as a structure of alienation and the not-yet. The chapter reconstructs the tension between theodicy and bliss in Schelling’s genealogy of modernity, as well as analyzes the place of mysticism in this genealogy and highlights his Romantic proclamation of the coming epoch of magic, bliss, and what William Wordsworth calls the “one life.” In the Schellingian framework, Christianity and (...) modernity remain co-imbricated in and as the hegemonic Christian-modern world, and modernity appears as a failed salvific epoch that inherits the Christian promise of a blissful future. What the chapter terms the general Christian contradiction as the structure of universal diremption forms the basis of Schelling’s view of the world as a whole and provides the context in which his thought is placed in the rest of the book. (shrink)

This introduction outlines Schelling’s concept of bliss (Seligkeit) as antagonistic to the negativity of the modern world, and as emerging from the post-Enlightenment, post-Revolutionary landscape of crisis. It argues that Schelling’s metaphysics refracts in a singular way the co-imbrication of Christianity, modernity, and bliss, as well as the tension between bliss and theodicy at the heart of the Christian-modern trajectory. It then stages two contrasting scenes that help to illuminate the stakes of Schellingian bliss: the foreclosure of bliss through endless (...) postlapsarian toil in Immanuel Kant and the Romantic scene of a non-alienated oneness with nature that leaves possibilities unused in Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Theodor Adorno. Finally, the introduction sketches, via Hans Blumenberg and Sylvia Wynter, the problem of theodicy in Schelling as grappling with the negativity, suffering, and evil inherent in the world, including the systemic evils of global Western-centric modernity such as colonialism, racialization, and enslavement. (shrink)

This chapter outlines the Schellingian method of philosophical construction as responding to the modern crisis of universal reality and human subjectivity. For Schelling, human self-assertion generates a fallen or inverted condition, plunging the human together with nature into an abyss of darkness and decenteredness. True philosophy, accordingly, aims at a universal recentering through a redemptive ekstasis as the resubmission of particular consciousness to the universal or divine. Conceived as a kind of spiritual exercise or even struggle, the Schellingian philosophical method (...) entails the following operations: self-purification; kenosis, or the combination of self-emptying with self-sacrifice; polar (reflection-based) construction as a practice of wrestling with God; and anamnesis or recollection. Thanks to this method, the Schellingian philosopher becomes capable of constructing universal history as the progressive “proof” of the divine and as a providential system of times, pointing the way toward absolute bliss despite the darkness and contingency of universal reality. (shrink)

This chapter reconstructs Schelling’s post-Copernican theo-cosmic epic, or the narrative of universal (divine, natural, and human) history he develops after 1809. Permeated by the antagonism between bliss and the world and the Gnostic contradiction between the hidden divinity and the creator God, this narrative follows the geometric and theodical movement of cosmic revolution, whose figure is that of an ascending spiral generated iteratively by the two-part movement of Fall and redemption or inversion and re-inversion. This movement unfolds in the tension (...) between cosmic war and the peace of the Sabbath, and is governed by the (divine and natural) law of place-assigning justice. The chapter argues that both Schelling’s political conservatism and his affinity with early socialism can be grasped as part of the cosmic revolution thus conceived. Schelling reconfigures history as a rising edifice (Stufenfolge) of human recentering, imposing the logics of telos, hierarchy, and transcendence on the decentered modern universe. (shrink)

This chapter interrogates the emergence of the concept of beatitude or bliss (Seligkeit) and the antagonistic entanglement between “bliss” and “world” as the dirempted structure of reality in Schelling’s early metaphysics. It argues that, in his 1795 writings, Schelling advances an analytic of the aporias of the modern demiurgic subject of self-assertion. In this analytic, the subject’s ceaseless synthetic productivity and striving for moral purity—the two paths to “absolute identity,” “absolute freedom,” or “absolute bliss”—are underwritten by the Gnostic longing for (...) bliss as the immediate abolition of the world understood as the prison to which the subject is bound. Bliss, however, cannot be produced: in seeking to produce bliss out of diremption, the subject reproduces the world, endlessly deferring bliss. In philosophically legitimating this deferral, idealism functions for Schelling as what Carl Schmitt calls the katechon, re-mediating, via the world’s not-yet, the demand for bliss in the now. (shrink)

In dialogue with black studies, this chapter interrogates Schelling’s Romantic vision of the oneness of humanity by revealing his concept of humanness and his vision of conversion to the consciousness of the true God to be racialized and supersessionist in character. The chapter revisits the logics of the universe and the Christian-modern world in Schelling’s lectures on “purely rational” philosophy, in which he justifies the white European subject as the normative demiurgic subject of history and advances his framework of race. (...) The chapter argues that Schelling’s racialization of geo-cosmic darkness as blackness and his legitimation of European colonialism and transatlantic slavery refract the geo-extractive racial logics of the post-1492 global world. Schelling’s world-grammar or his metaphysics of the hierarchized ascent (Stufenfolge) to bliss constitutes, the chapter contends, at once a grammar of racialization, a universal mining operation, a supersessionist conversion narrative, and a racialized theodicy of the global. (shrink)

The concept of bliss, in its connotations of beatitude and salvation, may seem of little relevance to so-called secular modernity. Bliss Against the World argues otherwise by advancing a novel framework of the entanglement between modernity, Christianity, and bliss through the thought of German Idealist and Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling (1775–1854). In Schelling's concept of bliss (Seligkeit), the idea of salvation from the world mutates into a burning concern with the negativity of the modern world, and with the way modernity (...) inherits the Christian promise of a non-alienated future that never arrives. Throughout his thinking, Schelling grapples with the question of theodicy: Can this negative world be justified? And what would it mean to be free of the world—to enact bliss right now—when the idea of otherworldly salvation increasingly loses its conceptual relevance? This leads Schelling to conceptualize bliss as what refuses or apocalyptically annihilates this world and its divisions and burdens. Bliss Against the World reinterprets Schelling's philosophical trajectory from the 1790s to the 1840s, showing his metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and natural philosophy to be underwritten by the apocalyptic tension between bliss and theodicy. It argues that this tension is located likewise at the heart of modernity and reconstructs the Schellingian genealogy of the modern age as intensifying what may be termed the general Christian contradiction. It also focuses on Schelling's anxiety about the possibility of universal history in the dark and de-centered universe and critiques his Romantic construction of humanity and his geo-racial theodicy of history—a theodicy that refracts and legitimates the violent logics of post-1492 modernity, including European colonialism, racialization, and transatlantic slavery. Bliss Against the World thus theorizes bliss not only with, but also against Schelling, who emerges from this book as a key thinker of modernity, and of the Christian-modern trajectory as a path to salvation in the shadow of whose failure we continue to live. (shrink)

This programmatic conclusion brings together the dimensions of bliss and the sites of world-delegitimation and world-refusal assembled throughout the book: nomadism and mysticism, blackness and hidden divinity, magic and the mysteries, the bliss of lying on water and looking at the skies, and that of the all-consuming revolutionary fire. In dialogue with Sun Ra’s invocation of a “dark tradition,” the conclusion asks whether one may speak of a “counter-tradition” of bliss against the world. It then turns to the foreclosure of (...) bliss by the nineteenth-century capitalist world and the waning of the Romantic impulse of bliss, suggesting that the early Marx’s vision of being-in-common inherits the antagonistic Romantic impulse. Finally, the conclusion contends that the entwined questions—How to insist on bliss without theodicizing it? and How to think the world without justifying it?—index a central philosophical problem that Schelling tries but ultimately fails to resolve. (shrink)

This interlude argues that the temporality of the world-process in Schelling is underwritten by his rethinking of clock time as the cosmic ground of salvation history, and of synchronizing the history of global humanity in its directedness toward absolute bliss. With recourse to the clockwork metaphor in Jacob Boehme and Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, the interlude elucidates Schelling’s statements that “all that is is merely the hand on the great dial of the vast clockwork of nature,” and that God “counts and (...) measures by this clockwork.” Taken on its own, clock time for Schelling is fallen time, emerging from the oscillation of cosmic proto-matter; and as inhabiting this temporality, modernity remains caught in the circle of the eternally same. To become the basis of salvation history, clock time must be subordinated to kairotic time. Bliss, however, is indifferent to either clock time or kairotic time, indexing the abolition of time itself. (shrink)

Part II rereads Schelling’s post-1809 philosophy as a geo-racial theodicy of universal history. Following the collapse of his earlier vision of immediate bliss, this theodicy refracts Schelling’s grappling with the possibility of providence in the face of the darkness and contingency of the modern universe. In response to the ongoing discovery of deep time at what is often taken to be the beginning of the Anthropocene, Schellingian theodicy seeks to reimpose a human-centric providential order on the decentered universe, and to (...) reassert humanity as the universal being at the ideal center of the cosmos. This introduction outlines Schelling’s system narrative as Part II reconstructs it, arguing that, on the basis of the interplay of cosmic decentering and recentering, Schelling envisions universal history as a narrative of a spiral-shaped ascent toward bliss. In his providential, kenotic, and kairotic construction of history, historical contingency itself emerges as the ceaseless divine tribunal. (shrink)

This interlude sketches the nexus of the young Schelling’s theoretical concerns in the early 1790s, rethinking this nexus as intertwined with the movement of his time and with the self-reflection of the modern age at the critical late eighteenth-century moment. It identifies five central lines of inquiry that the young Schelling pursues: the modern epoch and its task; the “pagan” world and the relation between mediation and immediacy; early Christianity and Gnosticism, or orthodoxy and heresy; theodicy and the problem of (...) evil; and the logic of demiurgic subjectivity between Plato and Kant. The interlude emphasizes especially the political-theological question of the legitimacy of world order in the young Schelling; his justification of the Fall in the 1792 On the Origin of Evil; and his early heretical counter-program, including his planned work entitled History of Gnosticism, arguing that the broadly Gnostic tendency of world-delegitimation originates in his earliest thought. (shrink)

This interlude sketches a reading of the original cosmic explosion and the duality of forces in Schelling’s natural philosophy as it develops by the year 1800, arguing that the Schellingian subject of pre-human nature—not unlike the modern human subject analyzed in Chapter 2—appears as the alienated subject of endless synthetic production through which the world or universe as the structure of universal diremption is constantly reproduced. The ceaseless productivity of nature and the multitude of natural forms signal for Schelling not (...) bliss but the constitutive unblissfulness of nature, which seeks to return to its ante-original essence of repose and inactivity and to attain absolute freedom from the world, yet remains bound to the structure of diremption and doomed to generate finite products without end. Only in his post-1801 philosophy of absolute identity, the interlude suggests, does Schelling attempt to radically re-vision nature or the All as immediately blissful. (shrink)

Modern continental thought is skeptical toward happiness and no longer easily reconciles its pursuit with a desire for justice, the good, and truth. Critical theory has unmasked happiness as a commodity within an industry, an ideological tool for control, and a sedative to, justification of, and distraction from social injustice. This article argues that these diagnoses make it all the more important that philosophy, rather than taking leave of happiness, once again turns it into a serious object of thought. Employing (...) the work of Badiou and Agamben as case studies, it asks what a critically informed yet affirmative philosophy of happiness should entail at a structural level. Assessing their philosophical models of happiness, this article 1) recognizes in their work a revival of the ancient ideal of a true, just, and happy life, 2) opens up a new way of evaluating their work, and 3) articulates basic requirements of a contemporary, affirmative philosophy of happiness beyond the happiness industry and its critics. (shrink)

Readers of Theodor Adorno often have understood him as a "totalizing negativist." If it truly is the case that Adorno saw modern society as a realm of complete falsehood, however, his own social theory is unintelligible. In A Precarious Happiness, Peter E. Gordon aims to redeem Adorno from this negativist interpretation by showing that it arises from a basic misunderstanding of his work. Pushing against entrenched interpretations, Gordon argues that Adorno's philosophy is animated by a deep attachment to a concept (...) of happiness or human flourishing, and it is only by virtue of that normative standard that Adorno judges the world a catastrophic failure. Through a comprehensive reading of Adorno's work, A Precarious Happiness shows that in an imperfect world, the available standards of our flourishing are also imperfect. Looking beyond Adorno, Gordon suggests that the practice of social criticism, even if it is directed toward exposing what is "false," cannot succeed without appealing to an unrealized notion of what would be right. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aristotle on Happiness, Virtue, and Wisdom by Bryan ReeceJakub JirsaREECE, Bryan. Aristotle on Happiness, Virtue, and Wisdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 240 pp. Cloth, $99.99In contemporary discussions about Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, dissatisfaction is growing with the exclusivist and inclusivist interpretations. Bryan Reece's book stands out for two reasons: He conducts extensive analysis, pinpointing conflicting principles in previous interpretations of happiness, and he persuasively bridges the gap between (...) exclusive and inclusive readings of Aristotle's text.Reece rebrands the two families of interpretation as "monism" and "pluralism." According to monists, happiness is contemplative activity, which does not include ethically virtuous activities as parts. According to [End Page 552] pluralists, happiness is virtuous activity, a composite that includes not only contemplative activity but also ethically virtuous activities as parts. It is another virtue of this book that Reece is generous and charitable; he looks for convincing arguments for each theory and viewpoint in question.In the second chapter Reece turns to what he calls the "divergence thesis," namely, the claim that Aristotle believes "that it is possible to possess theoretical wisdom and reliably manifest it in contemplation without possessing practical wisdom." Reece's argument against this thesis is that since the manifestation of theoretical wisdom in contemplation is a voluntary, reliably performed, fine activity, it must imply the activity of the practical intellect. This in turn implies the manifestation of practical virtue. For a reliably performed contemplation one needs tamed passions and properly managed leisure (see Politics 7.15.133a24–34). Moreover, the voluntary nature of theoretical knowledge (see De anima 2.5.417b18–25) implies the role of practical wisdom as well.Chapter 4 discusses whether there are two kinds of happiness, one corresponding to contemplation, the other to the ethically virtuous activities (the "duality thesis"). The claim that there are two kinds of happiness is usually based on lines Nicomachean Ethics 1178a6–10. Here Reece suggests a novel reading: "Life in accordance with intellect is proper to a human being, since intellect is a human being most of all. So, this life also is happiest. (Life) in accordance with the other kind of virtue is (proper to a human being) in a secondary way, for activities in accordance with this (kind of virtue) are properly human." The comparison in these lines is then between life in accordance with intellect and life in accordance with the virtues of character. The first life is proper to us, because we are above all our intellect. The life in accordance with moral virtue reflects our complex nature, and it is proper to us due to this complexity of our human nature.How could Aristotle claim that it is human to live in accordance with the intellect? According to Aristotle, the gods contemplate, and so contemplation cannot be proper to human beings. Reece calls this statement "the divinity thesis" and deals with it in chapter 5. Reece's argument for the difference in type between divine and human contemplation is based on the fact that human contemplation is manifestation of theoretical wisdom. Theoretical wisdom includes intellect (nous) and knowledge (epistēmē). Reece then goes through possible contemplating divine beings and shows why their formal cause of contemplation cannot be theoretical wisdom. Formal differences between activities mark type distinctions. Therefore, divine and human contemplation are of different types.Chapters 2 through 4 paved the way for Reece's own conclusion: "[H]appiness belongs to all and only those to whom contemplation and ethically virtuous activities belong, and contemplation is proper to happiness in a primary way, whereas ethically virtuous activities are proper to that same kind of happiness in a secondary way." According to [End Page 553] Reece, Aristotle claims that something can be said to be proper to x as its essence or as its idia (from idios, proper or own). To be proper in the sense of an essence is to be proper in a primary way; idia are then proper in a secondary way. Therefore, Reece says, contemplation is proper to happiness in a primary way, whereas virtuous activities are proper to happiness in a secondary way.I have concerns about Reece's argument... (shrink)

This article investigates the anthropology of Spinoza as a strategy for happiness, political, as well as individual. Inspired by the readings, comments, and perspectives of Matheron, Deleuze, and Balibar, I will analyze Spinoza’s theory of the affects as the basis for this strategic anthropology. These authors all share an ontological and political vision organized around the concepts of multitude and the transindividual which result directly from Spinoza’s analysis of the human affects in books III and IV of the Ethics, and (...) his theory of political dynamics developed in the Political treatise. They consider Spinoza a contemporary and share with him the idea of a relational ontology and an inextricable and mutual interdependence of the individual and the community which is captured in the concept of the transindividual. With Matheron/Spinoza I will focus on the question of anthropology and the structure of thought, with Deleuze/Spinoza on the kinds of knowledge in relation to the human mind and body, and with Balibar/Spinoza on the transindividual, productive, active, and thus strategic nature of our thinking. These three analyses of human thought and affects all proceed from the hypothesis of conatus/desire as human essence and aim not just at theoretical knowledge but rather at the effective improvement of our well-being and lives, that is, at happiness. (shrink)

This open access book presents a comparative study of two classics of world literature, offering the first sustained study of what unites and divides the Nicomachean Ethics and the Bhagavad Gita. -/- Asking what the texts think is the nature of moral action and how it relates to the highest good, Roopen Majithia shows how the Gita stresses the objectivity of knowledge and freedom from being a subject, while the Ethics emphasizes the knower, working out Aristotle’s central commitment to the (...) idea of substance as the primary building block of the world. Yet both the Gita and the Ethics explain variety in human behaviour in terms of three driving forces. Both agree moral agency is a construct that is a function of background, education and habit, presupposing a cultural, political and economic infrastructure. -/- What distinguishes the texts is how the content of right action is generated. Reading them together, alert to their individual accounts of how the practical relates to the reflective dimensions of life, Majithaia enriches our understanding of two cornerstone texts in the Greek and Indian philosophical traditions. -/- The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollectionsdotcom. Open access was funded by The Marjorie Young Bell Faculty Fund and The Hart Almerrin Massey Endowment. (shrink)

This article analyses Averroes/Ibn Rushd´s (d. 1198) views on motherhood in his commentary on Plato´s Republic. The starting point for this inquiry is Averroes´ comparison of the women in his society to plants. Averroes argues that performing the duties of motherhood, i.e. being children´s primary caregiver, does not constitute nor involve any form of human virtue. Averroes´ low esteem for activities of motherhood has hitherto been ignored. This paper argues that the comparison of women to plants does not hinge on (...) societal criticism solely but on at least two additional factors: Aristotle on plants in De Anima and on this low appreciation for tasks of parenthood. Furthermore, this paper aims to show that the latter is incompatible with Aristotle´s views in his ethics and biology, which emphasize, respectively, the friendship that characterizes the parent-child relationship and the intelligence and virtue needed to raise the next generation. (shrink)

In the future society of knowledge (practices and digital worlds) the fundamental strategic factor is the quality of human capital and the relationships that shape it in a coordinated manner for the well-being of people and organisations, not just the availability of raw materials or advanced technologies as IT or cloud computing. Levers of well-being that represent factors for the integrated enhancement of the interconnections between human capital, social capital and semantic capital. Useful to forge the concrete transition from techno-centric (...) approaches (for rigidity, heaviness and control) to anthropocentric approaches (for lightness, flexibility and self-organisation) towards eco-resilient, motivating and enabling organisations that have at their core the valorisation of emotions, feelings and passions and therefore of people between skills and competences accompanied by spirituality. “Emotional organisational” forms, therefore, insofar as they are engaging and participatory, and constructive of a new Humanism of Work and Enterprise to achieve a shared sense of our inexhaustible learning to learn in order to prosper together with the Other, who is within us and outside too. In the knowledge that within every worker, manager or entrepreneur—as well as in every user—we always find a person attracted by the sense of the limits in our species as living beings, hungry for reflective knowledge of the Other to explore their relentless overcoming between emotions and empathy in search of meaning in some shared happiness. The debate on the crisis of the welfare state and on the relaunch of a second-level (or proximity) welfare as a “complementary” to that delivered to us by the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which is increasingly fragile and costly in all industrialised countries due to debt sustainability, social changes (family, work, life expectancy, mobility, education, gender gap, migration), technological change and transformation of the relationship with nature (cloning, induced fertility, biotech, neuroscience, etc.), is therefore fundamental.Structural response to the endemic planetary phenomenon of job dissatisfaction that leads 70–80% of people in workplaces to demotivation (Gallup, USA, 2020) and thus to work poorly or uninterestedly or in depressive forms. Destroying—in this way—sense that will then be transferred also in private life in a vicious circle of relational fragility and malaise and with subtractive effects of creativity and intelligence. The aim of this contribution is, therefore, to try to shed light on organisational and business evolution which, as we shall see, puts the person back at the centre of the processes, in particular, by looking at the relationship between organisations, digitalisation and emotions, to reunite what Fordism had separated and the twentieth century consolidated (also by super-ordinating technology to Man and underestimating the relationship with nature, the environment and the community): machines and man, intellectual and manual, mind body and conscience, intelligence and operativity, decision and action, individual and community, abstract and concrete. This is a transformative trajectory in search of a “well-being without adjectives” that cannot be accompanied by the simple growth of income or luxury consumption, which dynamic organisations can help to support by enhancing the emotional factors and the multiple human and group intelligences, exploring their potential and constructively offering responsibility and collaboration in the awareness between mindfulness and sensemaking, “beyond” control and hierarchy in order to restore productivity (depressed for over 30 years)—and in particular cognitive one—stable positive performance and creative innovation. A transformation that is now necessary in organisations in order to rebuild a sense of corporate belonging as a common good that requires “strong” forms of direct and indirect participation in the generation of value for new forms of creativity at the service of employeeship (“beyond” leadership) for a shared growth of a company as an “ecology of prosperity” for a new “human flowering” in the smart organisation exploring talent in everyone in an emergent composition between competences, virtues and spirituality. (shrink)

This book explores the connection between God and happiness, with happiness understood as a life of well-being or flourishing that goes well for the one living it. It provides a historical and contemporary survey of philosophical questions, theories, and debates about happiness, and it asks how they should be answered and evaluated from a theistic perspective. The central topics it covers are the nature of happiness (what is it?), the content of happiness (what are the constituents of a happy life?), (...) the structure of happiness (is there a hierarchy of goods?), and the possibility of happiness (can we be happy?). It argues that God's existence has significant, positive, and desirable implications for human happiness. (shrink)