1 / 7

Happiness and Society

Happiness and Society. Timo Airaksinen. 1. Happiness is a matter of presentation of the self in social life. People say they are happy. 82 % in Finland. Why would they do so? Some reasons are: convention, conformism, convenience. Every person is expected to be happy. 2.

eugenia
Download Presentation

Happiness and Society

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Happiness and Society Timo Airaksinen

  2. 1 • Happiness is a matter of presentation of the self in social life. • People say they are happy. 82 % in Finland. • Why would they do so? • Some reasons are: convention, conformism, convenience. • Every person is expected to be happy.

  3. 2 • SomeTheories of Happiness • Desire –theory • Small desires vs. grand desires • The paradox of desire • Self-realization (eudaimoinia) • projects • Virtue theory • Hedonism • Positive • Negative

  4. 3 • The external conditions of happiness: • Aristotle: a happy person is virtuous, beautiful, rich, noble man. • Virtue is only a necessary, not sufficient condition of happiness.

  5. 4 • Happy society leads to happy social life. • This is a necessary condition of happiness. • Example: happiness in shanty towns. • Unhappy society leads to unhappy social life. • One cannot be happy in unhappy society.

  6. 5 • What makes a society a happy one? • My conjecture is this: • Happy society is a society which does not experience a threat. • Example: Aztek society of Tenochtitlan and Huitsilopotzl. What is the threat. • We are not happy, or are we? • Our threats: climate change and terrorism, immigration, hunger, poverty.

  7. 6 • Some people say that friends are important (“small social circle”). • This is not a philosophical issue, why? • It is important to have good friends. • It is all ambiguous and contingent: • If you have friends, they are good friends, and they stay with you, you are happy. • In your ‘friends’ are nasty, you are not happy.

More Related