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Happiness?

Happiness seems to be the ultimate goal of our existence. At the end, all we want is to be happy. We want to do/to be/to feel a lot of things in order to reach goals (ends) but Happiness appears to be The End within and for itself: we don’t want to be happy for the sake of something else – we want happiness for its own sake.

But to this conviction, we can oppose the uncertainty of what exactly we mean by happiness.

There seem to be no objective definition for happiness: the contingencies within everyone’s existence make people wish for different things as the sources of what could make them happy. We might consider happiness as a universal wish – though without any possible universal agreement on what will cause it. In this Olio, we’ll consider different possible answers to the following questions:

Is happiness a sum of pleasures?
Is it an unattainable, or even vain ideal?
Is it up to us to be happy?
Should we refrain from thinking in order to be happy?

Join philosopher Jeanne Proust as we dive into this topic from all angles and possibly find an evening of happiness.

Jeanne Proust has studied Philosophy and Visual Arts in Bordeaux, Berlin, and Paris. Her research focuses on Théodule Ribot’s Diseases of the Will, both in philosophical and psychological perspectives. While teaching at different universities here in New York, Jeanne is advocating for a widening of philosophical education beyond the frontiers of academia.











When: Fri., May. 25, 2018 at 7:00 pm
Where: The Strand
828 Broadway
212-473-1452
Price: $20, includes complimentary beer
Buy tickets/get more info now
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Happiness seems to be the ultimate goal of our existence. At the end, all we want is to be happy. We want to do/to be/to feel a lot of things in order to reach goals (ends) but Happiness appears to be The End within and for itself: we don’t want to be happy for the sake of something else – we want happiness for its own sake.

But to this conviction, we can oppose the uncertainty of what exactly we mean by happiness.

There seem to be no objective definition for happiness: the contingencies within everyone’s existence make people wish for different things as the sources of what could make them happy. We might consider happiness as a universal wish – though without any possible universal agreement on what will cause it. In this Olio, we’ll consider different possible answers to the following questions:

Is happiness a sum of pleasures?
Is it an unattainable, or even vain ideal?
Is it up to us to be happy?
Should we refrain from thinking in order to be happy?

Join philosopher Jeanne Proust as we dive into this topic from all angles and possibly find an evening of happiness.

Jeanne Proust has studied Philosophy and Visual Arts in Bordeaux, Berlin, and Paris. Her research focuses on Théodule Ribot’s Diseases of the Will, both in philosophical and psychological perspectives. While teaching at different universities here in New York, Jeanne is advocating for a widening of philosophical education beyond the frontiers of academia.

Buy tickets/get more info now