A Repost From September 2020:
Yesterday, I really enjoyed reading: Happiness: A Philosopher's Guide. By Frederic Lenoir, Ph.D. Melville House, 2015. 208 pages. A very readable introduction to many different theories and viewpoints about the nature of happiness.
"At the same time, as the great Scottish philosopher David Hume notes, "The great end of all human industry, is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modeled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators." The whole of history is made up of dreams or utopias drawn up by individuals and societies. It is because human beings have sought a better life and done all in their power to achieve it that all the progress of mankind has been accomplished. The same is true of our personal lives: it's because we want to make progress, to be happier, that our lives improve and give us ever more satisfaction. The obsession with happiness or the quest for a too-perfect happiness can produce the opposite result. The art of happiness consists entirely in not setting goals that are too high, unattainable and overwhelming. It's a good idea to set more gradual goals, to reach them step by step, to persevere without getting stressed while being able sometimes to let go and accept life's failures and ups and downs. Montaigne and the Taoist sages understood this clearly and expressed it well: we need to allow our attention to act effortlessly; never to confront a situation with the aim of forcing it; to be able to act and not to act. In short, to hope for happiness and pursue it while being supple and patient, without any excessive expectations, without stress, with hearts and minds in a state of constant openness."
- Happiness: A Philosopher's Guide. By Frederic Lenoir, p. 106.
"I would say that happiness is the awareness of an overall and enduring state of satisfaction in a meaningful existence founded on truth. Obviously, the contents of this satisfaction vary from one individual to another, and depend on their sensibility, their aspirations and the phase of their life they are going through. Without hiding the unpredictable and fragile nature of happiness, the aim of wisdom is to try and make it as deep and permanent as possible, irrespective of the ups and downs of existence, external events and the pleasant or unpleasant events of everyday life."
- Frederic Lenoir, p. 35
Hypertext Notebooks by Michael Garofalo:
Happiness: Quotes, Good Reads, Sayings
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