A01=Pascal Bruckner
Acedia
Advertising
Anguish
Apathy
Aphorism
Arbitrariness
Asceticism
Author_Pascal Bruckner
Boredom
Bourgeoisie
Buddhism
Calculation
Category=QDTQ
Christianity
Consumerism
Dalai Lama
Death
Disease
Disgust
Dizziness
Enthusiasm
Epictetus
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
Euthanasia
Everyday life
Evil
Feeling
Generosity
Grief
Hatred
Headache
Idea of Progress
Ideology
Indulgence
Infatuation
Injunction
Instant
Irony
Lethargy
Literature
Martyr
Modernity
Morality
Mourning
Narrative
Obscurantism
Obstacle
Odile Jacob
Omnipotence
Optimism
Perversion
Philosopher
Physician
Platitude
Prejudice
Pretext
Problem of evil
Protestantism
Purgatory
Religion
Renunciation
Resentment
Romanticism
Spirituality
Suffering
Symptom
The Other Hand
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
Uncertainty
Utilitarianism
Vulgarity
We Are Doomed
Wealth
Product details
- ISBN 9780691143736
- Weight: 397g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 30 Jan 2011
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Happiness today is not just a possibility or an option but a requirement and a duty. To fail to be happy is to fail utterly. Happiness has become a religion--one whose smiley-faced god looks down in rebuke upon everyone who hasn't yet attained the blessed state of perpetual euphoria. How has a liberating principle of the Enlightenment--the right to pursue happiness--become the unavoidable and burdensome responsibility to be happy? How did we become unhappy about not being happy--and what might we do to escape this predicament? In Perpetual Euphoria, Pascal Bruckner takes up these questions with all his unconventional wit, force, and brilliance, arguing that we might be happier if we simply abandoned our mad pursuit of happiness. Gripped by the twin illusions that we are responsible for being happy or unhappy and that happiness can be produced by effort, many of us are now martyring ourselves--sacrificing our time, fortunes, health, and peace of mind--in the hope of entering an earthly paradise. Much better, Bruckner argues, would be to accept that happiness is an unbidden and fragile gift that arrives only by grace and luck.
A stimulating and entertaining meditation on the unhappiness at the heart of the modern cult of happiness, Perpetual Euphoria is a book for everyone who has ever bristled at the command to "be happy."
Pascal Bruckner is the award-winning author of many books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novel "Bitter Moon", which was made into a film by Roman Polanski. Bruckner's nonfiction books include "The Tyranny of Guilt" (Princeton), "The Temptation of Innocence", and "The Tears of the White Man" (Free Press).
