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The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being
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Review
Review from previous edition: "Insightful and imaginative. A serious pleasurable read for those happy enough to explore a difficult subject." --Paul O'Doherty, Irish Times"Subtitled 'the elusive pscychology of well-being', this is a brilliant and comprehensive philosophical treatment of happiness in the psychological sense... The book calls us to rethink our assumptions about the good life and the good society, raising many of the questions explored by AldousHuxley in Brave New World and Island. All this raises interesting and complex questions for politicians and educationalist as they grapple with introducing happiness studies into the curriculum." --Psychology/Parasychology"An original and thorough investigation, richly informed by empirical psychology, of almost every topic connected, or seen as connected, with happiness: the self, well-being and virtue, and the good society. It is written in an engaging, often humorous, sometimes poetic, style, and contains awealth of illustrations from life, literature, film, science, the arts, the news media, and Haybron's own prodigious imagination... It is safe to say that, after this book, happiness will never be the same again." --Neera Badhwar, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews"A prodigious act of scholarship whose comprehensiveness dwarfs previous efforts. The best single source for empirical and philosophical approaches to investigating happiness. A highly nuanced treatment that rewards the reader with its frequent and original insights." --Robert L. Woolfolk, Princeton University"Haybron's book is a perfect example of how philosophical ethics can matter beyond the academy as well as within it. This original book is an acute, engaging, and well-informed discussion of an issue of concern to every human being." --Roger Crisp, University of Oxford"Daniel Haybron has written a rare book that combines philosophical sophistication with detailed knowledge of, and respect for, the psychological literature. He integrates the best that philosophy and psychology have to offer in pursuit of an answer to the question that matters above allothers: how we ought to live. The result is a book that will edify psychologists and philosophers alike." --Barry Schwartz, Swarthmore College"Both progress and provocation are vibrantly on display in Dan Haybron's oustanding new book, The Pursuit of Unhappiness. The book is a model of humanistic inquiry: acute philosophical argumentation disciplined by close and careful attention to the latest and best in the sciences of mind,everywhere textured by a keen eye for what it is to be a person - and why it matters." --John M. Doris, Washington University in St Louis"Dan Haybron has written the definitive philosophical book on happiness, and it is a must-read for scholars of the good life. The work is broad, balanced, and interesting, and yet forcefully presents the case that happiness is a crucial element of good living. In making the argument, Haybronbeautifully reviews both the philosophy of happiness, including what this concept means, and the empirical work on the topics arising in fields such as psychology and economics." --Ed Diener, Universtiy of Illinois"Dan Haybron asks the key philosophical questions about happiness: what is happiness, and how can we know about it, and what is it good for? His book offers insightful answers that are well-grounded in both science and philosophy. The book is full of clear and rigorous arguments, but at thesame time it is a pleasure to read. It will be a milestone in the philosophical discussion of happiness." --David Chalmers, Australian National University
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About the Author
Daniel Haybron is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University. His research interests centre on several issues in ethics: well-being and the good life, moral evil, and the virtues.
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Product details
Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press; 1 edition (October 28, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780199592463
ISBN-13: 978-0199592463
ASIN: 0199592462
Product Dimensions:
9.1 x 0.9 x 6 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
3.7 out of 5 stars
3 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#441,556 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Haybron claims that there is a liberal optimism about people's aptitude to find happiness through the benefits of freedom. I disagree. He is an awful historian, apparently. Giving people freedom isn't just a matter of optimism about their nature as highly rational beings. I actually generally consider the justification of increased freedom to be pessimism regarding the wisdom of mobs and all powerful leaders (hence our system of checks and balances). Giving people freedom could be viewed as a form of harm reduction in such a case. The extreme unhappiness people can suffer from living in a dictatorship or a less free society is something I want to avoid. While having more freedom might not be ideal for happiness, the alternatives aren't either. I liked the parts of the book about the nature of happiness and some of his discussion of well being (minus the moralistic crap). However, his discussion of the pursuit of happiness/unhappiness is honestly the kind of rhetoric you see from the authoritarian left and the Puritanical right wing types. Communism was an example of such an approach gone horribly wrong. "The group knows what is best for you." "The government can help you be happier and knows what's best for you." "The government will save you from yourself." "We are just trying to make sure everyone is healthy and happy, so we're bringing these restrictions. If you violate them, then you must be punished." The founding fathers of the United States knew that such paternalism (or on the left you also have maternalism now) could easily turn disastrous. Haybron should have stuck to what he does best: analyzing what happiness is. He got in over his head discussing policy and societal change.I would turn Haybron's claims in their head and say that Haybron has embarrassingly naive paternalist optimism. I mean, how does he propose to control people? Casting them out? That's what they did in many "traditional" societies. It's not like there weren't people who had interests in different ways of life. They were just not always treated so well. Does Haybron propose putting more people in prison if they aren't living a life that is conducive enough to his vision of what is good for them? You don't have to look far in modern America to find an example of the government imposing "prudence" on its people. Consider the war on drugs. The drug war has not worked. We have more people in prison in the USA, per capita, than any other country. How does throwing someone in prison benefit their well being? How are we to restrict freedoms? Does he consider how freedom restriction was enforced in the past? It wasn't good for those who happened to violate the norms... For those who did not have idiosyncratic preferences or who happened to agree with the majority, it was fine. One other thing Haybron gets totally wrong is implying (or maybe he outright stated it) that in a "liberal" society, people aren't really governed by norms or traditions so much anymore. I don't see that at all. Plenty of people in the USA are definitely guided by tradition and norms... hence the taboos we have about sex, drugs, etc. Plenty of people aren't that liberal and our laws aren't that liberal. In some states, there are quite conservative laws and cultures. The history of the USA is one of Puritanical repression and plenty of group-think. I don't read about Puritans and wish I lived like them. Haybron seems concerned with learning about the universe and human nature. There was no place for that in many "traditional" societies. If you wanted to think scientifically and it went against the herd, you would have some problems (it wouldn't be so conducive to your happiness).I wonder what this conservative utopia Haybron has somewhere in his mind would look like. Did he read Plato's Republic too many times or something? It's easy to be a critic (like Haybron is), but not as easy to talk about specific policy or cultural changes. I mean, if he actually has some cultural suggestions, it would be interesting to hear them. I honestly would prefer policy and cultural recommendations from someone less idealistic, someone with less utopian thinking, and someone who doesn't glorify "the way things were" though (they weren't too good!). Even in "collectivistic" cultures, one could argue that people having individual rights benefit the group as they are more likely to contribute in a way to the group that they otherwise wouldn't. Haybron admits this to some degree in his book Happiness: A Very Short Introduction. David Wong made this point in detail in his book Natural Moralities (giving examples). I think the differences between "individualistic" and "collectivistic" cultures are sometimes overblown in an attempt to romanticize "collectivistic" cultures.For examples of unhappy "traditional" cultures, see Robert Edgerton's book Sick Societies. Also, maybe read about the Yanomamo... a pretty violent and misogynistic "traditional" culture. If you downplay reason and glorify group think, that is what you can get... It's kind of the luck of the draw in such societies: you could end up with a situation where one ignorant violent group dominates or a situation that is more egalitarian in such a case. However, since rights and democracy aren't explicitly valued, it's much more up to chance. I think Haybron was trying too hard to be original, cutting edge and different when writing about modern "liberal" societies. However, he failed, miserably. I also think he clearly has an issue with "liberal" America. He has a serious axe to grind and it comes through. I wonder why he doesn't go live with the Amish if they're so much better.There are problems I saw with Haybron's analysis of happiness. Like most philosophers, he has an obvious bias against the importance of pleasure and against hedonism. He generally talks about hedonism using a narrow conception of the term. He really tried to make sure that no one could be a hedonist and use his conception of happiness. I think he failed at that. He admitted that engagement and attunement states are described as pleasant. He also gave very little discussion of the different between positive and negative emotions. He just claimed that positive emotions are those we approach and negative emotions are those we withdraw from. And WHY do we approach positive emotions? Maybe because they are enjoyable? LOL I just think there is needless bias against hedonism (hedonism closer to that of the epicureans who didn't just focus on fleeting pleasures). He purposely mentioned the Stoics as a example of those who sought happiness in the form of attunement when the Epicureans would have been a better example since they focused way more on attunement. Otherwise, he made many insightful points about happiness and I found many of his points helpful. I charitably gave the book 2 stars since I really liked the sections regarding the nature and significance of happiness.
This extremely interesting and in places downright fascinating book is worth every penny you spend to acquire it. Sure, it's a hardback, but get it anyway: you'll probably want to re-read it. Haybron's title mentions unhappiness, but this is not a catalogue of the myriad ways in which we are, or can be, unhappy -- though he thinks we're less happy than we could be. He writes exceptionally well, and he thinks clearly. Indeed it's hard to imagine that this book hasn't been the product of decades of reflection on the weighty matter of human well-being and contentedness, for he seems very wise. He's a philosopher but there are many examples in it, and a number of "practical" asides, and a goodly number of references to, and quotations from, works of literature. Above all, he is someone who has absorbed work done in other disciplines, principally psychology.He is a cautious rather than a dogmatic writer, though after he treats such themes as psychic affirmation, self-fulfillment (not in the sappy, New Age sense), the role of the emotions in our happiness, and so on, he concludes that we should live our lives in a more contextualist fashion. By this contextualism I take it that he means a kind of communitarian liberalism, something he thinks would be more conducive to our flourishing and happiness.For a work of philosophy this has some amusing parts (Haybron talks about Pollyannas vs Kvetches). He discusses -- generally in passing -- a number of thinkers and views. One will find references to Bentham, Plato, Nietzsche, Mill, Freud, Aristotle, etc. (in addition to writers like Hemingway, Thoreau, Forster and Pound). Using evidence from narratives, oral reports, novels and works of philosophy, and above all from studies in psychology and economics, Haybron shows that the major (popular) ethical theories philosophers discuss (Kantianism, utilitarianism, virtue theory) are not fine-grained enough when it comes to treating the question of happiness/flourishing. Integrating the insights of psychological investigations into philosophy will help in providing what is missing. Ultimately his target is what he calls the Personal Authority position, the view that we know ourselves best/well and therefore know what is best for our flourishing. This target is a form of "transparency" subjectivism, which he rightly argues is incompatible with the evidence. Haybron defends a version of mild objectivism, which he says is distinct from Aristotelian and other virtue/perfectionist positions, but which seems quasi-Aristotelian to me (I'll defer to Haybron). Overall, he wants us to rethink some of the more individualistic and selfish attitudes engendered by liberal modernity, without throwing the liberal baby out with the subjectivist/individualist bathwater. It could make us happier.
This book systematically critiques the idea that people are by default capable of pursuing their own well-being. The author's arguments are cogent, and he is precise without eschewing the difficult-to-articulate. This book could greatly alter your worldview. It is very much worth reading.
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