Editorial for Topical Issue “Happiness in Contemporary Continental Philosophy”
-
Ype de Boer
What has become of happiness in contemporary continental philosophy? Talk of happiness, images of it, and people pursuing it are all around us. Yet within continental philosophy, it is a remarkably little-discussed topic. Its absence there is remarkable not only in contrast to the high value attributed to it in everyday Western culture, but also with regard to its own tradition and roots in ancient Greek philosophy. As is well-known, among the ancient philosophers, happiness constituted one of the most esteemed subjects for reflection. Speaking in general terms, one might even say that it was for them the very purpose of philosophy, if not of all human endeavors. By contrast, modern continental philosophy is marked by a certain distrust of happiness. At least since Kant’s exclusion of the desire for happiness from the sphere of morality in the Critique of Practical Reason, to some, the very call to reflect upon happy life is an indication of bad taste, privilege, or otherworldliness. Who has time to reflect on happiness when there are so many other, more urgent topics that demand our attention, such as climate change, racism, sexism, pandemics, and refugee-crises?
When continental philosophers do engage with the topic, it is mostly through a highly critical lens. Happiness, such seems to be the consensus, has become a commodity within a “Happiness Industry” backed by a “Happiness science” and by positive-thinking movements, which have turned it into an ideological tool for control. Moreover, it has become separated from morality and concerns for social justice to such a degree that, rather than aiding the emancipatory efforts of philosophy, it has become an obstacle that critical thought ought to overcome.
Yet even if one agrees with these rather bleak diagnoses of the contemporary state of happiness, can philosophy really do without constructive consideration and affirmative theorization of happiness? Can we even make sense of the critique of happiness without explicitly or implicitly developing understandings of a more authentic happiness?
Taking such considerations as its cue, this special issue explores the role and value of happiness within contemporary continental philosophy. It poses a challenge to find, also within the philosophies of contemporary thinkers that are mostly considered critical with regards to contemporary happiness, the elements for an affirmative theory. One can say that, overall, it has a post-critical character, loosely understood as working from critical theoretical insights toward a constructive philosophical theory of happiness.
In the first article of the issue, “Badiou and Agamben Beyond the Happiness Industry and its Critics,” Ype de Boer further articulates the challenge that faces contemporary continental thought with regard to happiness. Employing the work of Giorgio Agamben and Alain Badiou as case studies, who both in their own ways place happiness again at the center of their philosophy, De Boer asks what a critically informed yet affirmative philosophy of happiness should entail at the structural level. He finds in their work a revival of the ancient ideal of a true, just, and happy life and argues that philosophy cannot do without a notion of “true happiness,” which needs to be ontologically founded and understood in relation to justice.
In order to understand the difference between modern engagement with happiness with respect to ancient philosophy, in “Happiness and the Biopolitics of Knowledge: From the Contemplative Lifestyle to the Economy of Well-Being and Back Again,” Antonio Cimino argues that the ideal of happiness as a contemplative lifestyle has in modernity been displaced by what present-day policy-makers call “the economy of well-being.” Developing a biopolitical analysis of EU policy documents, Cimino shows that both well-being and knowledge are no longer considered ends in themselves, but have become instrumentalized and subordinated to capitalist models of efficiency and productivity. Without nostalgia for the elitist model of the Aristotelian contemplative life, Cimino calls for a “repurposing” of the contemplative life to suit modern democratic life whilst simultaneously re-establishing it as an end in itself.
Kurt Borg, in his article “Reanimating Public Happiness: Reading Cavarero and Butler Beyond Arendt,” investigates Hannah Arendt’s idea that in modernity, the “pursuit of happiness” has historically shifted from a public understanding of happiness to an increasingly privatized one. In response to this problem, Borg finds in the works of Cavarero and Judith Butler the elements for a new and politically fertile idea of happiness. It is in the political practice of movements such as Ni Una Menos, that Borg finds such an idea forcefully expressed. There, public happiness is reanimated to a degree that transcends some of the limitations of Arendt’s, Cavarero’s, and Butler’s accounts of happiness.
By contrast, in “Thinking from the Home: Emanuele Coccia on Domesticity and Happiness,” Evan Edwards analyses the notion of happiness from the perspective of the household. He traces these themes of domesticity and happiness throughout the work of Emanuele Coccia, and explains how for the latter, it is only by taking domestic concerns seriously that philosophy can begin to theorize the possibility of happiness today, claiming that “rather than beginning with the polis, philosophy must think the city from the home, and the home from the kitchen.”
In “A strategy for Happiness, in the Wake of Spinoza,” Sonja Lavaert argues that, with regard to happiness, we should consider Spinoza as our contemporary. Interpreting his philosophical anthropology as a strategy for happiness, she shows how this strategy is taken up and developed in the work of Alexandre Matheron, Gilles Deleuze, and Étiene Balibar. She shows how a full, active, and free life need not be considered an individualistic life but includes powerful political aspects.
With her article “Das Unabgeschlossene (das Glück). Walter Benjamin’s ‘Idea of Happiness’,” Vivian Liska takes up the challenge of finding an idea of happiness in the work of a modern thinker mostly considered a “doomsayer.” Exploring the many detours, incompletions, and indirections in the writings of Walter Benjamin on happiness, she shows how neither the interpretation of Habermas, which states that Benjaminian happiness is politically impotent, nor the interpretation by Agamben, which reads it in a politically destructive manner, are adequate. Benjaminian happiness should, rather, be understood as “messianic sparks” that are able to “save the past and open the future in the present.”
Anné Hendrik Verhoef argues in “The Role and Value of Happiness in the Work of Paul Ricoeur” that happiness is a major theme in the work of Ricoeur, mostly known as the philosopher of suffering. Verhoef shows how Ricoeur’s dialectical understanding of happiness offers a unique position that avoids the one-sidedness of popular contemporary notions of happiness as well-being and satisfaction, and explicitly accounts for unhappiness and the matter of chance. Additionally, by proposing an understanding of happiness in the “optative” mode, it forms an interesting alternative to happiness in the “elegic” mode as developed by Vivan Liska in her contribution to the work of Walter Benjamin.
The work of Friedrich Nietzsche is likewise mostly understood as highly critical of happiness, as his oft-quoted witty remark on the pursuit of happiness supports: “People don’t strive for happiness, only the English do.”[1] In “On the ‘How’ and ‘Why’: Nietzsche on Happiness and the Meaningful Life,” Marta Faustino argues that, nonetheless, his attempt at theorizing a joyful and affirmative disposition toward existence can and should be understood in terms of happiness. That interpretative lens allows not only for a Nietzschean critique of modern happiness theories such as hedonism, satisfaction theory, and objective list theory but also for a better understanding of what Nietzsche’s philosophy itself affirms.
Cécilia Andrée Monique Lombard argues in “Albert Camus and Rachel Bespaloff: Happiness in a Challenging World” that even an understanding of existence as absurd allows for powerful ideas and experiences of happiness. Developing a comparative reading of the works of Albert Camus and Rachel Bespaloff, she argues that in the work of the former, happiness can be understood in terms of the enjoyment of quietude, whereas Bespaloff conceptualizes happiness with regard to music and transcendence.
Maciej Huzarski tackles the problem of the absence of a clear notion of happiness in the psychoanalytical theories on humor and comedy in the work of Sigmund Freud and Alenka Zupančič. In “Symptomatic Comedy. On Alenka Zupančič’s The Odd One In and Happiness” he argues that both Freud and Zupancic cannot properly thematize humor and comedy without a notion of happiness, and that, moreover, the absence of such a notion as “symptomatic.” Formulating a psychoanalytical notion of happiness that could fill this gap, Huzarski problematizes the political potential of the notion.
Comedy also plays an important role in Marina Marren’s article “Happiness and Joy in Aristotle and Bergson as Life of Thoughtful and Creative Action.” Developing first of all the affinity between the thought of Aristotle and that of Bergson with regard to happiness, Marren emphasizes the importance of contemplation and phronesis for the possibility of an active and creative existence. In addition, analyzing Bergson’s understanding of humor and comedy, she points out that humor allows for a comedic distance toward the hum-drum and highly instrumentalized nature of modern existence. We need comedy to interrupt that ongoing process to reinvigorate contemplative and phronetic capabilities, essential to a full and happy life.
Reference
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, edited by Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman, translated by Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.Search in Google Scholar
© 2024 the author(s), published by De Gruyter
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Articles in the same Issue
- Special issue: Happiness in Contemporary Continental Philosophy, edited by Ype de Boer (Radboud University, the Netherlands)
- Editorial for Topical Issue “Happiness in Contemporary Continental Philosophy”
- Badiou and Agamben Beyond the Happiness Industry and its Critics
- Happiness and the Biopolitics of Knowledge: From the Contemplative Lifestyle to the Economy of Well-Being and Back Again
- Reanimating Public Happiness: Reading Cavarero and Butler beyond Arendt
- Thinking from the Home: Emanuele Coccia on Domesticity and Happiness
- A Strategy for Happiness, in the Wake of Spinoza
- Das Unabgeschlossene (das Glück). Walter Benjamin’s “Idea of Happiness”
- The Role and Value of Happiness in the Work of Paul Ricoeur
- On the “How” and the “Why”: Nietzsche on Happiness and the Meaningful Life
- Albert Camus and Rachel Bespaloff: Happiness in a Challenging World
- Symptomatic Comedy. On Alenka Zupančič’s The Odd One In and Happiness
- Happiness and Joy in Aristotle and Bergson as Life of Thoughtful and Creative Action
- Special issue: Dialogical Approaches to the Sphere ‘in-between’ Self and Other: The Methodological Meaning of Listening, edited by Claudia Welz and Bjarke Mørkøre Stigel Hansen (Aarhus University, Denmark)
- Sonic Epistemologies: Confrontations with the Invisible
- The Poetics of Listening
- From the Visual to the Auditory in Heidegger’s Being and Time and Augustine’s Confessions
- The Auditory Dimension of the Technologically Mediated Self
- Calling and Responding: An Ethical-Existential Framework for Conceptualising Interactions “in-between” Self and Other
- More Than One Encounter: Exploring the Second-Person Perspective and the In-Between
- Special issue: Lukács and the Critical Legacy of Classical German Philosophy, edited by Rüdiger Dannemann (International Georg-Lukács-Society) and Gregor Schäfer (University of Basel)
- Introduction to the Special Issue “Lukács and the Critical Legacy of Classical German Philosophy”
- German Idealism, Marxism, and Lukács’ Concept of Dialectical Ontology
- The Marxist Method as the Foundation of Social Criticism – Lukács’ Perspective
- Modality and Actuality: Lukács’s Criticism of Hegel in History and Class Consciousness
- “Objective Possibility” in Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness
- The Hegelian Master–Slave Dialectic in History and Class Consciousness
- “It Would be Helpful to Know Which Textbook Teaches the ‘Dialectic’ he Advocates.” Inserting Lukács into the Neurath–Horkheimer Debate
- Everyday Hegemony: Reification, the Supermarket, and the Nuclear Family
- Critique of Reification of Art and Creativity in the Digital Age: A Lukácsian Approach to AI and NFT Art
- Special issue: Theory Materialized–Art-object Theorized, edited by Ido Govrin (University of Tessaly, Greece)
- Material–Art–Dust. Reflections on Dust Research between Art and Theory
- Nancy in Jerusalem: Soundscapes of a City
- Zaniness, Idleness and the Fall of Late Neoliberalism’s Art
- Enriching Flaws of Scent عطر עטרה A Guava Scent Collection
- Special issue: Towards a Dialogue between Object-Oriented Ontology and Science, edited by Adrian Razvan Sandru (Champalimaud Foundation, Portugal), Federica Gonzalez Luna Ortiz (University of Tuebingen, Germany), and Zachary F. Mainen (Champalimaud Foundation, Portugal)
- Retroactivity in Science: Latour, Žižek, Kuhn
- The Analog Ends of Science: Investigating the Analogy of the Laws of Nature Through Object-Oriented Ontology and Ontogenetic Naturalism
- The Basic Dualism in the World: Object-Oriented Ontology and Systems Theory
- Knowing Holbein’s Objects: An Object-Oriented-Ontology Analysis of The Ambassadors
- Relational or Object-Oriented? A Dialogue between Two Contemporary Ontologies
- The Possibility of Object-Oriented Film Philosophy
- Rethinking Organismic Unity: Object-Oriented Ontology and the Human Microbiome
- Beyond the Dichotomy of Literal and Metaphorical Language in the Context of Contemporary Physics
- Revisiting the Notion of Vicarious Cause: Allure, Metaphor, and Realism in Object-Oriented Ontology
- Hypnosis, Aesthetics, and Sociality: On How Images Can Create Experiences
- Special issue: Human Being and Time, edited by Addison Ellis (American University in Cairo, Egypt)
- The Temporal Difference and Timelessness in Kant and Heidegger
- Hegel’s Theory of Time
- Transcendental Apperception from a Phenomenological Perspective: Kant and Husserl on Ego’s Emptiness
- Heidegger’s Critical Confrontation with the Concept of Truth as Validity
- Thinking the Pure and Empty Form of Dead Time. Individuation and Creation of Thinking in Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy of Time
- Ambient Temporalities: Rethinking Object-Oriented Time through Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger
- Special issue: Existence and Nonexistence in the History of Logic, edited by Graziana Ciola (Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands), Milo Crimi (University of Montevallo, USA), and Calvin Normore (University of California in Los Angeles, USA) - Part I
- Non-Existence: The Nuclear Option
- Individuals, Existence, and Existential Commitment in Visual Reasoning
- Cultivating Trees: Lewis Carroll’s Method of Solving (and Creating) Multi-literal Branching Sorites Problems
- Abelard’s Ontology of Forms: Some New Evidence from the Nominales and the Albricani
- Boethius of Dacia and Terence Parsons: Verbs and Verb Tense Then and Now
- Regular Articles
- “We Understand Him Even Better Than He Understood Himself”: Kant and Plato on Sensibility, God, and the Good
- Self-abnegation, Decentering of Objective Relations, and Intuition of Nature: Toomas Altnurme’s and Cao Jun’s Art
- Nietzsche, Nishitani, and Laruelle on Faith and Immanence
- Meillassoux and Heidegger – How to Deal with Things-in-Themselves?
- Arvydas Šliogeris’ Perspective on Place: Shaping the Cosmopolis for a Sustainable Presence
- Raging Ennui: On Boredom, History, and the Collapse of Liberal Time
Articles in the same Issue
- Special issue: Happiness in Contemporary Continental Philosophy, edited by Ype de Boer (Radboud University, the Netherlands)
- Editorial for Topical Issue “Happiness in Contemporary Continental Philosophy”
- Badiou and Agamben Beyond the Happiness Industry and its Critics
- Happiness and the Biopolitics of Knowledge: From the Contemplative Lifestyle to the Economy of Well-Being and Back Again
- Reanimating Public Happiness: Reading Cavarero and Butler beyond Arendt
- Thinking from the Home: Emanuele Coccia on Domesticity and Happiness
- A Strategy for Happiness, in the Wake of Spinoza
- Das Unabgeschlossene (das Glück). Walter Benjamin’s “Idea of Happiness”
- The Role and Value of Happiness in the Work of Paul Ricoeur
- On the “How” and the “Why”: Nietzsche on Happiness and the Meaningful Life
- Albert Camus and Rachel Bespaloff: Happiness in a Challenging World
- Symptomatic Comedy. On Alenka Zupančič’s The Odd One In and Happiness
- Happiness and Joy in Aristotle and Bergson as Life of Thoughtful and Creative Action
- Special issue: Dialogical Approaches to the Sphere ‘in-between’ Self and Other: The Methodological Meaning of Listening, edited by Claudia Welz and Bjarke Mørkøre Stigel Hansen (Aarhus University, Denmark)
- Sonic Epistemologies: Confrontations with the Invisible
- The Poetics of Listening
- From the Visual to the Auditory in Heidegger’s Being and Time and Augustine’s Confessions
- The Auditory Dimension of the Technologically Mediated Self
- Calling and Responding: An Ethical-Existential Framework for Conceptualising Interactions “in-between” Self and Other
- More Than One Encounter: Exploring the Second-Person Perspective and the In-Between
- Special issue: Lukács and the Critical Legacy of Classical German Philosophy, edited by Rüdiger Dannemann (International Georg-Lukács-Society) and Gregor Schäfer (University of Basel)
- Introduction to the Special Issue “Lukács and the Critical Legacy of Classical German Philosophy”
- German Idealism, Marxism, and Lukács’ Concept of Dialectical Ontology
- The Marxist Method as the Foundation of Social Criticism – Lukács’ Perspective
- Modality and Actuality: Lukács’s Criticism of Hegel in History and Class Consciousness
- “Objective Possibility” in Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness
- The Hegelian Master–Slave Dialectic in History and Class Consciousness
- “It Would be Helpful to Know Which Textbook Teaches the ‘Dialectic’ he Advocates.” Inserting Lukács into the Neurath–Horkheimer Debate
- Everyday Hegemony: Reification, the Supermarket, and the Nuclear Family
- Critique of Reification of Art and Creativity in the Digital Age: A Lukácsian Approach to AI and NFT Art
- Special issue: Theory Materialized–Art-object Theorized, edited by Ido Govrin (University of Tessaly, Greece)
- Material–Art–Dust. Reflections on Dust Research between Art and Theory
- Nancy in Jerusalem: Soundscapes of a City
- Zaniness, Idleness and the Fall of Late Neoliberalism’s Art
- Enriching Flaws of Scent عطر עטרה A Guava Scent Collection
- Special issue: Towards a Dialogue between Object-Oriented Ontology and Science, edited by Adrian Razvan Sandru (Champalimaud Foundation, Portugal), Federica Gonzalez Luna Ortiz (University of Tuebingen, Germany), and Zachary F. Mainen (Champalimaud Foundation, Portugal)
- Retroactivity in Science: Latour, Žižek, Kuhn
- The Analog Ends of Science: Investigating the Analogy of the Laws of Nature Through Object-Oriented Ontology and Ontogenetic Naturalism
- The Basic Dualism in the World: Object-Oriented Ontology and Systems Theory
- Knowing Holbein’s Objects: An Object-Oriented-Ontology Analysis of The Ambassadors
- Relational or Object-Oriented? A Dialogue between Two Contemporary Ontologies
- The Possibility of Object-Oriented Film Philosophy
- Rethinking Organismic Unity: Object-Oriented Ontology and the Human Microbiome
- Beyond the Dichotomy of Literal and Metaphorical Language in the Context of Contemporary Physics
- Revisiting the Notion of Vicarious Cause: Allure, Metaphor, and Realism in Object-Oriented Ontology
- Hypnosis, Aesthetics, and Sociality: On How Images Can Create Experiences
- Special issue: Human Being and Time, edited by Addison Ellis (American University in Cairo, Egypt)
- The Temporal Difference and Timelessness in Kant and Heidegger
- Hegel’s Theory of Time
- Transcendental Apperception from a Phenomenological Perspective: Kant and Husserl on Ego’s Emptiness
- Heidegger’s Critical Confrontation with the Concept of Truth as Validity
- Thinking the Pure and Empty Form of Dead Time. Individuation and Creation of Thinking in Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy of Time
- Ambient Temporalities: Rethinking Object-Oriented Time through Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger
- Special issue: Existence and Nonexistence in the History of Logic, edited by Graziana Ciola (Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands), Milo Crimi (University of Montevallo, USA), and Calvin Normore (University of California in Los Angeles, USA) - Part I
- Non-Existence: The Nuclear Option
- Individuals, Existence, and Existential Commitment in Visual Reasoning
- Cultivating Trees: Lewis Carroll’s Method of Solving (and Creating) Multi-literal Branching Sorites Problems
- Abelard’s Ontology of Forms: Some New Evidence from the Nominales and the Albricani
- Boethius of Dacia and Terence Parsons: Verbs and Verb Tense Then and Now
- Regular Articles
- “We Understand Him Even Better Than He Understood Himself”: Kant and Plato on Sensibility, God, and the Good
- Self-abnegation, Decentering of Objective Relations, and Intuition of Nature: Toomas Altnurme’s and Cao Jun’s Art
- Nietzsche, Nishitani, and Laruelle on Faith and Immanence
- Meillassoux and Heidegger – How to Deal with Things-in-Themselves?
- Arvydas Šliogeris’ Perspective on Place: Shaping the Cosmopolis for a Sustainable Presence
- Raging Ennui: On Boredom, History, and the Collapse of Liberal Time
