My son, Bruno.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
The Happiness Fad
Goodbye misery, hello happiness. Of course, despite our obsession with sadness, happiness has never gone completely out of fashion. But a recent flood of scholarly books about it (Happiness by Darrin M. McMahon, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science by Richard Layard, Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt, The Pursuit of Happiness by Darrin McMahon among others) and its inclusion as a serious scientific research topic (see, for instance, the work of Sonja Lyubomirsky) suggests a new academic trend. The focus is no longer on depression, the question is, what exactly is happiness? And now, happiness is not just the selling line of most titles in the self-help section of your bookstore, but also, the novelty in the science and philosophy shelves. I couldn’t be happier.
Over at Philosophy Now, Jean Kazez has an excellent article discussing three of the books above. Also, check out her own book covering the issue here.
More Happiness Please
by Jean Kazez
If we think carefully about our decisions, we’ll wind up living better lives, right? Jean Kazez asks this question in response to three recent books about happiness.
Do reflective people live better lives? To the Greeks, the answer was obvious. If the unexamined life is not worth living, as Socrates said, the examined life goes much better. We need to think deeply before aiming and acting, if we are to have the best chance of succeeding. Think, aim, succeed. It sounds good; but do things really work that way?
Two recent books on the psychology of happiness call into question the notion that success in life depends on thinking and aiming. Stumbling on Happiness, by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, suggests that we don’t steer our way toward better lives, but mostly just happen upon them. In The Happiness Hypothesis, University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt compares a person to a combination of horse and rider. Thinking (the rider) is not entirely in control.
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