Download or read book A Brief History of Happiness written by Nicholas P. White and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-06-09 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this brief history, philosopher Nicholas White reviews 2,500 years of philosophical thought about happiness. Addresses key questions such as: What is happiness? Should happiness play such a dominant role in our lives? How can we deal with conflicts between the various things that make us happy? Considers the ways in which major thinkers from antiquity to the modern day have treated happiness: from Plato’s notion of the harmony of the soul, through to Nietzsche’s championing of conflict over harmony. Relates questions about happiness to ethics and to practical philosophy.
Download or read book Happiness written by Darrin M. McMahon and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intellectual history of man's most elusive yet coveted goal. Today, we think of happiness as a natural right, but people haven't always felt this way. Historian McMahon argues that our modern belief in happiness is a recent development, the product of a revolution in human expectations carried out since the eighteenth century. He investigates that fundamental transformation by synthesizing two thousand years of politics, culture, and thought. In ancient Greek tragedy, happiness was considered a gift of the gods. During the Enlightenment men and women were first introduced to the novel prospect that they could--in fact should--be happy in this life as opposed to the hereafter. This recognition of happiness as a motivating ideal led to its consecration in the Declaration of Independence. McMahon then shows how our modern search continues to generate new forms of pleasure, but also, paradoxically, new forms of pain.--From publisher description.
Download or read book Happiness in World History written by Peter N. Stearns and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Happiness in World History traces ideas and experiences of happiness from early stages in human history, to the maturation of agricultural societies and their religious and philosophical systems, to the changes and diversities in the approach to happiness in the modern societies that began to emerge in the 18th century. In this thorough overview, Peter N. Stearns explores the interaction between psychological and historical findings about happiness, the relationship between ideas and popular experience, and the opportunity to use historical analysis to assess strengths and weaknesses of dominant contemporary notions of happiness. Starting with the advent of agriculture, the book assesses major transitions in history for patterns in happiness, including the impact of the great religions, the unprecedented Enlightenment interest in secular happiness and cheerfulness, and industrialization and imperialism. The final, contemporary section covers fascist and communist efforts to define alternatives to Western ideas of happiness, the increasing connections with consumerism, and growing global interests in defining and promoting well-being. Touching on the experiences in the major regions of Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and North America, the text offers an expansive introduction to a new field of study. This book will be of interest to students of world history and the history of emotions.
Download or read book Invention of happiness written by Denis Curti and published by Marsilio. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A charming portrait of early-20th-century European society through the lens of Lartigue, with 55 unpublished photographs Despite becoming interested in photography when he was barely in double digits, French artist Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986) didn't achieve mainstream recognition until he was nearly 70 years old. A 1963 exhibition of his boyhood photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York prompted new appreciation for his pictures, which bore a clear affinity with the street photography of the great humanist photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. Though he mainly supported himself as a painter later on in life, Lartigue was devoted to the art of photography and continued to capture the world around him until he was in his 90s, beginning with domestic candid shots in his childhood and later depicting the upper crust of European society. With their motion-blur and frequently grinning, unposed subjects, Lartigue's images convey the photographer's genuine passion for life and a consistent interest in everyday moments. The book presents 120 images from Lartigue's numerous personal photo albums, including 55 pictures that have never been published before.
Download or read book A Private History of Happiness 99 Moments of Joy from Around the World written by George Myerson and published by Anima. This book was released on 2019-02-07 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bliss of lingering in a warm bed on a winter morning, to a bracing springtime walk by the seaside, A Private History of Happinessoffers the reader a wealth of delightfully fresh perceptions of where and how happiness may be found. These 99 moments of happiness are arranged by theme - Morning, Friendship, Garden, Family, Leisure, Nature, Food and Drink, Well-being, Creativity, Love and Evening - and each is followed by a brief description and commentary that sets the extract in context and encourages further reflection. Drawing on a wide and international range of literary sources - from Ptolemy to Tolstoy - George Myerson reveals that small, unpretentious joys have been shared by human beings across cultures and over thousands of years. He invites us to discover the happiness in our own lives that can be found here and now.
Download or read book The Invention of Happiness written by Brian Wilson Aldiss and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Pursuit of Happiness in the Founding Era written by Carli N. Conklin and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2019-03-20 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars have long debated the meaning of the pursuit of happiness, yet have tended to define it narrowly, focusing on a single intellectual tradition, and on the use of the term within a single text, the Declaration of Independence. In this insightful volume, Carli Conklin considers the pursuit of happiness across a variety of intellectual traditions, and explores its usage in two key legal texts of the Founding Era, the Declaration and William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. For Blackstone, the pursuit of happiness was a science of jurisprudence, by which his students could know, and then rightly apply, the first principles of the Common Law. For the founders, the pursuit of happiness was the individual right to pursue a life lived in harmony with the law of nature and a public duty to govern in accordance with that law. Both applications suggest we consider anew how the phrase, and its underlying legal philosophies, were understood in the founding era. With this work, Conklin makes important contributions to the fields of early American intellectual and legal history.
Download or read book It s All About the Bike written by Robert Penn and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-04-26 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Penn has saddled up nearly every day of his adult life. In his late twenties, he pedaled 25,000 miles around the world. Today he rides to get to work, sometimes for work, to bathe in air and sunshine, to travel, to go shopping, to stay sane, and to skip bath time with his kids. He's no Sunday pedal pusher. So when the time came for a new bike, he decided to pull out all the stops. He would build his dream bike, the bike he would ride for the rest of his life; a customized machine that reflects the joy of cycling. It's All About the Bike follows Penn's journey, but this book is more than the story of his hunt for two-wheel perfection. En route, Penn brilliantly explores the culture, science, and history of the bicycle. From artisanal frame shops in the United Kingdom to California, where he finds the perfect wheels, via Portland, Milan, and points in between, his trek follows the serpentine path of our love affair with cycling. It explains why we ride. It's All About the Bike is, like Penn's dream bike, a tale greater than the sum of its parts. An enthusiastic and charming tour guide, Penn uses each component of the bike as a starting point for illuminating excursions into the rich history of cycling. Just like a long ride on a lovely day, It's All About the Bike is pure joy- enriching, exhilarating, and unforgettable.
Download or read book The Pursuit of Happiness written by Darrin M. McMahon and published by Penguin Group(CA). This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Men and women throughout history have pursued happiness more consistently than any other goal, but what they conceived happiness to be has constantly changed. Once it was considered a gift from the gods; now we consider it a right. How did these changes take place and what do they tell us about our society and ourselves? 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.
Download or read book The Mansion of Happiness written by Jill Lepore and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-03-26 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renowned Harvard scholar and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore has written a strikingly original, ingeniously conceived, and beautifully crafted history of American ideas about life and death from before the cradle to beyond the grave. How does life begin? What does it mean? What happens when we die? “All anyone can do is ask,” Lepore writes. “That’s why any history of ideas about life and death has to be, like this book, a history of curiosity.” Lepore starts that history with the story of a seventeenth-century Englishman who had the idea that all life begins with an egg, and ends it with an American who, in the 1970s, began freezing the dead. In between, life got longer, the stages of life multiplied, and matters of life and death moved from the library to the laboratory, from the humanities to the sciences. Lately, debates about life and death have determined the course of American politics. Each of these debates has a history. Investigating the surprising origins of the stuff of everyday life—from board games to breast pumps—Lepore argues that the age of discovery, Darwin, and the Space Age turned ideas about life on earth topsy-turvy. “New worlds were found,” she writes, and “old paradises were lost.” As much a meditation on the present as an excavation of the past, The Mansion of Happiness is delightful, learned, and altogether beguiling.
Download or read book Triumph of the City written by Edward Glaeser and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-01-31 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Best Book of the Year Award in 2011 “A masterpiece.” —Steven D. Levitt, coauthor of Freakonomics “Bursting with insights.” —The New York Times Book Review A pioneering urban economist presents a myth-shattering look at the majesty and greatness of cities America is an urban nation, yet cities get a bad rap: they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, environmentally unfriendly . . . or are they? In this revelatory book, Edward Glaeser, a leading urban economist, declares that cities are actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in both cultural and economic terms) places to live. He travels through history and around the globe to reveal the hidden workings of cities and how they bring out the best in humankind. Using intrepid reportage, keen analysis, and cogent argument, Glaeser makes an urgent, eloquent case for the city's importance and splendor, offering inspiring proof that the city is humanity's greatest creation and our best hope for the future.
Download or read book The Philosophy of Happiness written by Lorraine L. Besser and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-16 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emerging research on the subject of happiness—in psychology, economics, and public policy—reawakens and breathes new life into long-standing philosophical questions about happiness (e.g., What is it? Can it really be measured or pursued? What is its relationship to morality?). By analyzing this research from a philosophical perspective, Lorraine L. Besser is able to weave together the contributions of other disciplines, and the result is a robust, deeply contoured understanding of happiness made accessible for nonspecialists. This book is the first to thoroughly investigate the fundamental theoretical issues at play in all the major contemporary debates about happiness, and it stands out especially in its critical analysis of empirical research. The book’s coverage of the material is comprehensive without being overwhelming. Its structure and pedagogical features will benefit students or anyone studying happiness for the first time: Each chapter opens with an initial overview and ends with a summary and list of suggested readings.
Download or read book The Promise of Happiness written by Sara Ahmed and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-06 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Promise of Happiness is a provocative cultural critique of the imperative to be happy. It asks what follows when we make our desires and even our own happiness conditional on the happiness of others: “I just want you to be happy”; “I’m happy if you’re happy.” Combining philosophy and feminist cultural studies, Sara Ahmed reveals the affective and moral work performed by the “happiness duty,” the expectation that we will be made happy by taking part in that which is deemed good, and that by being happy ourselves, we will make others happy. Ahmed maintains that happiness is a promise that directs us toward certain life choices and away from others. Happiness is promised to those willing to live their lives in the right way. Ahmed draws on the intellectual history of happiness, from classical accounts of ethics as the good life, through seventeenth-century writings on affect and the passions, eighteenth-century debates on virtue and education, and nineteenth-century utilitarianism. She engages with feminist, antiracist, and queer critics who have shown how happiness is used to justify social oppression, and how challenging oppression causes unhappiness. Reading novels and films including Mrs. Dalloway, The Well of Loneliness, Bend It Like Beckham, and Children of Men, Ahmed considers the plight of the figures who challenge and are challenged by the attribution of happiness to particular objects or social ideals: the feminist killjoy, the unhappy queer, the angry black woman, and the melancholic migrant. Through her readings she raises critical questions about the moral order imposed by the injunction to be happy.
Download or read book The Origins of Happiness written by Andrew E. Clark and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-27 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new perspective on life satisfaction and well-being over the life course What makes people happy? The Origins of Happiness seeks to revolutionize how we think about human priorities and to promote public policy changes that are based on what really matters to people. Drawing on a range of evidence using large-scale data from various countries, the authors consider the key factors that affect human well-being, including income, education, employment, family conflict, health, childcare, and crime. The Origins of Happiness offers a groundbreaking new vision for how we might become more healthy, happy, and whole.
Download or read book Finding Happiness written by Christopher Jamison and published by Liturgical Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is being happy such an imperative in our world today? What is the meaning of happiness? In this book Abbot Christopher Jamison turns to monastic wisdom for answers. He explains that, in essence, happiness is a gift not an achievement. It is the fruit of giving and receiving blessings. Following the same accessible and engaging format of his previous book, Finding Sanctuary, Abbot Christopher examines different aspects of happiness and tells us what monastic wisdom has to say about them. In doing so, he offers steps for the journey of finding happiness. Christopher Jamison is abbot of Worth Abbey, a Benedictine monastery near London. He is also president of the International Commission on Benedictine Education and sits on the Council of the alliance for International Monasticism, a body that promotes links between monasteries across the North/South divide. He is author of Finding Sanctuary: Monastic Steps for Everyday Life and was the host of the popular BBC documentary series The Monastery. Watch and listen to what Abbot Christopher Jamison has to say about his book Finding Happiness "
Download or read book The Alchemy of Happiness written by Ghazzālī and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Happiness and the Limits of Satisfaction written by Deal Wyatt Hudson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1996 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In classical and medieval times, happiness was defined as 'well-being, ' a notion that included moral goodness. Today happiness is most often defined as 'well-feeling, ' and identified with subjective states such as satisfaction and peace of mind. Deal Hudson argues that the prevailing view is dangerous in politics as well as ethics, creating individuals with no other sense of obligation than finding personal satisfaction, regardless of the moral and spiritual cost to themselves and others. Hudson calls for a return to the classical tradition: no one should be called 'happy' who cannot also be called morally good. However, a contemporary version of happiness should also go beyond the classical notion by making room in the happy life for suffering and passion. Using the history of the idea of happiness as a backdrop to a critique of contemporary views, Hudson examines happiness from philosophical, religious, psychological, sociological, literary, and political points of view--for example, he shows how the tension between the two definitions of happiness is at the heart of the Declaration of Independence. The result is an excellent overview of the history of an idea as well as a compelling argument for moral and political change in our time.
