And yet, we noted him last time explicitly identifying health as a condition of happiness. So, he throws not a total disavowal but at least a big dash of cold water into every smiling face.
Likewise, his statement that "man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.” The intended implication may be that health and happiness alike are a matter of luck, not design. The inevitable rejoinder, from happy people everywhere, must be Branch Rickey's: sometimes, at least, luck is the residue of design. Get happy.
Schopenhauer's "curious contradiction" suggests we can be determinists and at the same time be happier, mostly by acknowledging Will and then not choosing not to feed it. Lenoir says that's not what he means by changing our inner lives. "We can be happier... by modifying our view of things, our thoughts and beliefs." We can "will what we will," then? But can we confirm that we can? Is it better if we can't?
Sonja Lyubomirsky says 40% of happiness "stems from personal efforts," a vague-enough statement to entertain if not entirely to understand. I'm hoping that won't be conclusively disconfirmed, 40% sounds good even if it implies a slight tilt to genetic predisposition that we probably shouldn't call determinism and certainly shouldn't call fatalism.
"No one will be happy if tormented by the thought of someone else who is happier," said Seneca before surrendering his own happy pursuit to the madness of the tormentor Nero.
Flaubert said "everyone takes his enjoyment in his own way and for himself alone." Some do, but there are altruists among us who aren't in it for themselves alone. The egocentric view may reassure hyper-egoists, but I hope the rest of us find it beside the point.
Carl Jung's "process of individuation," I'll bet, hits philosophers and philosophy majors earlier than most and before forty, for sure. Isn't that why we take courses like this, to get to the bottom of our "true individuality" and "pay more attention to our own sensibility"-even if only to challenge and replace it with a corrected view?
Goethe suggested that sensibility, character, and taste are less affected by externals than by the sheer spontaneous surge of "personal being" that defines "a child of Earth's chief happiness," but that's not Schopenhauer's (or the Buddha's) view. Or is it?
Goethe suggested that sensibility, character, and taste are less affected by externals than by the sheer spontaneous surge of "personal being" that defines "a child of Earth's chief happiness," but that's not Schopenhauer's (or the Buddha's) view. Or is it?
Frederic Lenoir says Schopenhauer "took up Goethe's idea and went even further... our nature predisposes us to be happy or unhappy." But Will is not personal for him. How we respond to the hypothesis of implacable impersonal Will might be.
Plato long ago distinguished grouches (duskolos) from more cheerful types (eukolos). But as some self-avowed grouches insist, whether the glass is happily half-full depends on what's in it.
Schopenhauer's "curious contradiction" suggests we can be determinists and at the same time be happier, mostly by acknowledging Will and then not choosing not to feed it. Lenoir says that's not what he means by changing our inner lives. "We can be happier... by modifying our view of things, our thoughts and beliefs." We can "will what we will," then? But can we confirm that we can? Is it better if we can't?
Sonja Lyubomirsky says 40% of happiness "stems from personal efforts," a vague-enough statement to entertain if not entirely to understand. I'm hoping that won't be conclusively disconfirmed, 40% sounds good even if it implies a slight tilt to genetic predisposition that we probably shouldn't call determinism and certainly shouldn't call fatalism.
"No one will be happy if tormented by the thought of someone else who is happier," said Seneca before surrendering his own happy pursuit to the madness of the tormentor Nero.
Flaubert said "everyone takes his enjoyment in his own way and for himself alone." Some do, but there are altruists among us who aren't in it for themselves alone. The egocentric view may reassure hyper-egoists, but I hope the rest of us find it beside the point.
Do we all have a peculiarly personal "deeper nature"? If you find the "atmosphere that suits" you best, have you found something deep? Must atmospheres be deep, to conduce to happiness? Or just, as the pluralists say, wide enough, at least, to accommodate the varieties of happy experience?
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"Today is the birthday of American composer and musician George Gershwin (1898), whose lyrical and jazzy pieces, like Rhapsody in Blue, “Summertime,” “I Got Rhythm,” and “Embraceable You,” have become part of the American Songbook and influenced musicians like Charlie Parker and Janis Joplin... he composed “Rhapsody in Blue” '1924), what many consider his masterpiece, in a manic frenzy. He’d been having dinner with his brother when they read a newspaper article saying Gershwin would be performing a new piece in public in two weeks, which he didn’t know about. He’d been inspired to write the piece on a train ride... "I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston I had a definite plot of the piece, as distinguished from its actual substance.'
When he performed the piece in public for the first time, Gershwin improvised some of what he was playing, and he didn’t write out the piano part until after the performance, so it’s unknown exactly how the original Rhapsody sounded, but it changed popular music forever. The soundtrack to the Woody Allen movie, Manhattan (1979) is composed entirely of Gershwin’s compositions, including Rhapsody in Blue...he died at the age of 38. He’d been behaving oddly for weeks and his doctors said he’d been suffering from a fast-growing, malignant brain tumor. Now, doctors say his erratic behavior and years-long battle with depression might have been the brain tumor all along and that Gershwin was likely misdiagnosed..." WA
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"Today is the birthday of American composer and musician George Gershwin (1898), whose lyrical and jazzy pieces, like Rhapsody in Blue, “Summertime,” “I Got Rhythm,” and “Embraceable You,” have become part of the American Songbook and influenced musicians like Charlie Parker and Janis Joplin... he composed “Rhapsody in Blue” '1924), what many consider his masterpiece, in a manic frenzy. He’d been having dinner with his brother when they read a newspaper article saying Gershwin would be performing a new piece in public in two weeks, which he didn’t know about. He’d been inspired to write the piece on a train ride... "I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston I had a definite plot of the piece, as distinguished from its actual substance.'
When he performed the piece in public for the first time, Gershwin improvised some of what he was playing, and he didn’t write out the piano part until after the performance, so it’s unknown exactly how the original Rhapsody sounded, but it changed popular music forever. The soundtrack to the Woody Allen movie, Manhattan (1979) is composed entirely of Gershwin’s compositions, including Rhapsody in Blue...he died at the age of 38. He’d been behaving oddly for weeks and his doctors said he’d been suffering from a fast-growing, malignant brain tumor. Now, doctors say his erratic behavior and years-long battle with depression might have been the brain tumor all along and that Gershwin was likely misdiagnosed..." WA
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