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Happiness and its pursuit have been a constant source of fascination and attraction for thousands of years. In ancient Greek tragedy, happiness was considered a gift of the gods, now we consider it a right. Why did this change and what does it tell us about our society? In The Pursuit of Happiness, cultural historian Darrin McMahon offers a brilliant summation of the history of happiness, and its evolution from divine gift to natural human entitlement. Central to the development of Christianity, ideas of happiness assumed their modern form during the Enlightenment, and McMahon follows this development through to the present day, showing how our modern quest for the 'holy grail' of happiness continues to generate new forms of pleasure, but also, paradoxically, new forms of pain. Perfect happiness may exist only in our minds, but McMahon helps us discover that as for Cervantes' knight of sad countenance, Quixote, to travel is better than to arrive.… (more)
My steps have held fast to your paths; my feet have not slipped. --Psalm 17: 5
The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. --Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
Dedication
For Courtney, partner in pursuit, who has endured all the moods that writing a book on happiness entails, and invented some of her own.
First words
(Preface): "One may contemplate history from the point of view of happiness" observfed the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, "but history is nto the soil in which happiness grows."
(Introduction): The search for happiness is as old as history itself, one might venture, and in a certain sense that claim would be true.
Happiness is what happens to us, and over that we have no control.
Quotations
Last words
We may well discover that the knights who dare to do so are less like the brave crusaders of lore than like Cervante's knight of the sad countenance, Quixote, who learns at the end of his journeys that the road is better than the arrival.
Happiness and its pursuit have been a constant source of fascination and attraction for thousands of years. In ancient Greek tragedy, happiness was considered a gift of the gods, now we consider it a right. Why did this change and what does it tell us about our society? In The Pursuit of Happiness, cultural historian Darrin McMahon offers a brilliant summation of the history of happiness, and its evolution from divine gift to natural human entitlement. Central to the development of Christianity, ideas of happiness assumed their modern form during the Enlightenment, and McMahon follows this development through to the present day, showing how our modern quest for the 'holy grail' of happiness continues to generate new forms of pleasure, but also, paradoxically, new forms of pain. Perfect happiness may exist only in our minds, but McMahon helps us discover that as for Cervantes' knight of sad countenance, Quixote, to travel is better than to arrive.
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Wikipedia in English
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