Chasing Happiness
What are some of the BIG questions that might surface while pondering happiness and meaning?
MEMES: Happiness
"You Want Me To Be A Saint. But You’re No Saint. You’re Not A Villain, Either. And Neither Am I. We’re Survivors."
SOURCE: Screenrant
NTP: Happiness
Self Improvement: the influence of AristotleThe Pursuit of Happiness
VIDS: Happiness
"Aristotle on Flourishing" by Nigel Warburton from the BBC's A History of Ideas series"The Good Life: Plato" by Chris Surprenant from the Wi-Phi series
"Plato" from the School of Life series
Is Life Meaningless?
"The Good Life: Aristotle" by Chris Surprenant from the Wi-Phi series
"Aristotle" from the School of Life series
"Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy" from the School of Life series
"Soren Kierkegaard" from the School of Life series
"The Good Life: Nietzsche" by Chris Surprenant from the Wi-Phi series
"Nietzsche" from the School of Life series
"Sartre" from the School of Life series
"Camus" from the School of Life series
The meaning of life according to "Simone de Beauvoir - Iseult Gillespie" from the TED Ed series
"Buddhism's Four Noble Truths" by NIgel Warburton from the BBC's A History of Ideas series
"What Is a Good Life?" from the Crash Course series
"Is there more to happiness than feeling good?" by Tamar Szabó Gendler from the Wi-Phi series
"Is Happiness All about Getting What You Want?" by Tamar Szabó Gendler from the Wi-Phi series
PODS: Happiness
"Myles Burnyeat on Aristotle on Happiness" from the series Philosophy Bites"Jonathan Wolff on Marx on Alienation" from the series Philosophy Bites
"Pascal Bruckner on Happiness" from the series Philosophy Bites
"Susan Wolf on Meaning In Life" from the series Philosophy Bites
"John Cottingham on The Meaning of Life" from the series Philosophy Bites
"Daoism" by Stephen West from Philosophize This!
"Confucianism" by Stephen West from Philosophize This!
IEP: Happiness
The Meaning of Life: Early Continental and Analytic PerspectivesThe Meaning of Life: Contemporary Analytic Perspectives
Martin Heidegger (1889—1976)
Nihilism
Albert Camus (1913—1960)
Stoic Ethics
Hedonism
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844—1900)
SEP: Happiness
The Meaning of LifeAesthetics of the Everyday
Happiness
Lit
A Hunger Artist
Open the Kafka reader above and read through his work entitled "A Hunger Artist." After reading the text and working your way through the provided resources, consider the following questions.
Questions:
- Can you relate starving yourself with human purpose?
- Where does human meaning and purpose dwell?
- Is purpose a cage?
- Is Kafka suggesting that there is no meaning to human existence through the story?
- Can we salvage meaning in the face of absurdity?
What Then? by W.B. Yeats
Questions:
- What is the view of happiness criticized through the poem?
- Why does Yeats' invoke the ghost of Plato? Why not, for example, invoke Aristotle or Descartes or Leibniz?
- What is perfection as glimpsed through the final stanza?
- After reading the poem, what criteria might you have for a meaningful sense of lived happiness?
"Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost
After reading the poem, consider the following questions:
- What was the name of the poem? Are you sure? Why do we refer so frequently to this poem as "The Road Less Travelled?"
- How does the poet describe the condition of the two roads? So what?
- On what basis does the poet base his decision?
- Is Frost suggesting that we should explore roads that are less traveled, and , that our bravery and audacity in choosing the one less traveled will surely result in our happiness?
- What role does memory and narrative play in how we frame our lives?
- What role might moral luck play in shaping our happiness?