Category: Happiness
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Money, Happiness, and Conditiones Sine Quibus Non
Money can't buy happiness. What it can buy are the conditions without which happiness is impossible. Thus spoke the Sage of the Superstitions.
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Our Pyrrhonian Predicament
It is widely admitted that there is something deeply unsatisfactory about the human condition. One aspect of our wretched state is recognized and addressed by the Pyrrhonists: we want certain knowledge but it eludes us. And so we must content ourselves with belief. But beliefs are in conflict and this conflict causes suffering which ranges…
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Attitude, Gratitude, Beatitude
Happy Thanksgiving to all my Stateside readers. The attitude of gratitude conduces to beatitude. Can it be said in plain Anglo-Saxon? Grateful thoughts lead one to happiness. However you say it, it is true. The miserable make themselves miserable by their bad thinking; the happy happy by their correct mental hygiene. Broad generalizations, these. They…
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Conceiving the Afterlife: Life 2.0 or Beatific Vision?
This weekend I had the pleasure of a visit from Dale Tuggy, noted philosopher of religion. We discussed a number of topics at table and on trail including imago dei, the nature of forgiveness, the role of Platonism in Christianity, and death and afterlife. His position on the latter topic I would characterize as 'Life…
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Conservatives, Liberals, and Happiness
Here, at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical I address the question of why conservatives are happier than liberals.
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The Mid-Life Crisis and the Happiness Curve: Life is Better After Fifty
Here: The mid-life crisis is a cliché: balding, paunchy man in red sports car, frantically trying to convince himself that women still find him attractive. Implicit in the word “crisis” is a sudden change. You wake up some day in your forties to realize that you are no longer young. The resulting angst—it’s all straight…
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Two Measures of Personal Success
One measure of success is how far you've gotten, and the other is how far you've come. The second is the better measure. On the occasions when you feel you haven't gotten very far in life, tell yourself, "But look where you started from, and what you had to work with, and the obstacles you…
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Conservatives, Liberals, and Happiness
It turns out that conservatives are happier than liberals. But why? Conservative explanation. Marriage and religious faith are conducive to happiness. More conservatives are married than liberals, and more practice a religion. Ergo, conservatives as a group are happier than liberals as a group. Liberal explanation. Conservatives are happier because they turn a blind eye to…
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The Wise Live by the Probable, not the Possible
The worldly wise live by the probable and not by the merely possible. It is possible that you will reform the person you want to marry. But it is not probable. Don't imagine that you can change a person in any significant way. What you see now in your partner is what you will get from here…
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Don’t Spoil Your Success
You may spoil your success if you compare it with someone else's. Beware of comparison. Not all comparison is invidious, but the potential for envy is there. Invidia is the Latin for 'envy.' An invidious comparison, then, is one that elicits envy. One can avoid envy by avoiding comparison. To feel diminished in one's sense…
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A Peace Worth Wanting? Problems with Pyrrhonian Ataraxia: Passivity and Porcinity
The Pyrrhonians see clearly that part of our misery in this life is due to our inability to attain certain knowledge. Wanting certainty, but unable to secure it, we are thrown back upon conflicting beliefs that inflame passions. The heat of the passions seems to vary inversely with the rational unprovability of the beliefs that…
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Why Are Lawyers So Unhappy?
Martin P. Seligman explains. Seligman! Now there's an aptronym for you. Selig is German for happy, blessed, blissful, although it can also mean late (verstorben) and tipsy (betrunken). So Seligman is the happy man or happy one. Nomen est omen? Give some careful thought to what you name your kid. 'Chastity' may have an anti-aptronymic effect.…
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Ambition Beyond Ability
He who is ambitious beyond his abilities courts unhappiness.
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Worldly Success: How Much is Enough?
You have enough worldly success if it enables you to advance the project of self-realization on the important fronts including the moral, the intellectual, and the spiritual. The vita contemplativa cannot be well lived by the grindingly poor, the sick, the politically and socially oppressed, the sorely afflicted and tormented. Boethius wrote his Consolations of Philosophy…
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A Philosopher on the Midlife Crisis
Kieran Setiya, The Midlife Crisis. An outstanding essay. What exactly is a midlife crisis? In the form that will concern us, then, the midlife crisis is an apparent absence of meaning or significance in life that allows for the continued presence of reasons to act. Although it is often inspired by the acknowledgement of mortality,…