Happiness

LISTEN. It's the first day of class in the latest iteration of Philosophy of Happiness. 

Last time this course convened was Fall 2019, pre-COVID. Our emphasis that semester was on Stoics and Epicureans, and "graceful life" philosophies generally. Good thing, with lockdown looming unseen just over our horizon we would all soon come to need more stoic perseverance and epicurean delight in the simple/domestic goods of life than we could then have easily imagined.

Before the month was out we'd all been introduced to "the oldest guy in the room," my future collaborator, who for once wasn't me. He declared an appreciation of the ouvre of Woody Allen, which -- in spite of everything -- I continue to share. Isaac in Manhattan makes a list of the things that make life worth living. We could also call it a Happy List. We should all make our lists, and then actively pursue and celebrate their various items.

This semester, we'll look again at stoics and epicureans. I will again profess a preference for the latter, though I find much to admire in the former. We'll also notice the convergence of attitude and approach the stoics share with Buddhists, when we read More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age. But "on the question of speaking" we'll challenge the call for silence. We're here to have a series of conversations, though not on "vulgar topics"...

“On the question of speaking, Stoics and Buddhists are at one. In Epictetus’ words: ‘Be mostly silent, or speak merely when necessary, and in few words. We may enter sparingly into conversation sometimes, when the occasion calls for it; but not about any of the common subjects, such as gladiators, or horse races, or athletic champions, or food, or drink – the vulgar topics of conversation; and especially not about individuals, either to blame, or praise, or make comparisons.”

We're also going to spend time with the great seminal essayist Montaigne, through the instructive mediation of his biographer Sarah Bakewell in How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer. He knew a trick or two.

“The trick is to maintain a kind of naïve amazement at each instant of experience - but, as Montaigne learned, one of the best techniques for doing this is to write about everything. Simply describing an object on your table, or the view from your window opens your eyes to how marvelous such ordinary things are. To look inside yourself is to open up an even more fantastical realm.”

And, at the enlightened suggestion of my collaborator, we're going to spend more time than has been customary in this course with my favorite philosopher William James. We'll look at John Kaag's Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life, and we'll pair his chapters with essays by his subject. My own interest in happiness as a philosophical subject is coevally rooted with my longstanding fascination with James, who said

"If we were to ask the question: “What is human life's chief concern?” one of the answers we should receive would be: “It is happiness.” How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness, is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure."

He also knew that endurance is often liable to interruption and derailment. But his good news is that the music of life can always recommence, even for "melacholy metaphysicians" like (on occasion) himself.

And, in a moment of transcendently happy defiance of life's inexorable  finitude, he wrote to the pessimistic historian Henry Adams:

Though the ULTIMATE state of the universe may be its extinction, there is nothing in physics to interfere with the hypothesis that the PENULTIMATE state might be a happy and virtuous consciousness... In short, the last expiring pulsation of the universe's life might be, "I am so happy and perfect that I can stand it no longer."

And then, within just a few weeks, James was gone. But he still inspires many of us to make the most of our penultimate opportunities. One of those is PHIL 3160. See you this afternoon.