Happy reading: happiness links

Written on February 2, 2008

In ‘Comment is free’ at The Guardian (UK) ‘Happy talk’ summarizes a recent lecture by Richard Schoch (author of ‘The Secrets of Happiness: Three Thousand Years of Searching for the Good Life‘); here’s an excerpt:

The fundamental error of the science [of happiness] – and the reason why so many of its recommendations sound trivial or just confused – is the assumption that happiness is the same as positive emotion. Researchers are continuously drawn back to this idea since it makes happiness measurable. In fact, that is in itself debatable. But if you do take happiness to be tantamount to pleasure you are left with a woefully insufficient model of felicity.

In a similar vein philosopher Colin McGinn has recently been wondering “whether utilitarianism might have neglected the fact that melancholy can sometimes be a good thing” (in response to the recent book Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy by Eric G. Wilson).