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基本説明
A stimulating and entertaining meditation on the unhappiness at the heart of the modern cult of happiness.
Full Description
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."
Contents
Introduction: Invisible Penitence 1 Part I: Paradise Is Where I Am 7 Chapter One: Life as a Dream and a Lie 9 Chapter Two: The Golden Age and After? 27 Chapter Three: The Disciplines of Beatitude 39 Part II: The Kingdom of the Lukewarm, or The Invention of Banality 67 Chapter Four: The Bittersweet Saga of Dullness 69 Chapter Five: The Extremists of Routine 84 Chapter Six: Real Life Is Not Absent 106 Part III: The Bourgeoisie, or The Abjection of Well-Being 129 Chapter Seven: "The Fat, Prosperous Elevation of the Average, the Mediocre" 131 Chapter Eight: What Is Happiness for Some Is Kitsch for Others 149 Chapter Nine: If Money Doesn't Make You Happy, Give It Back! 163 Part IV: Unhappiness Outlawed? 181 Chapter Ten: The Crime of Suffering 183 Chapter Eleven: Impossible Wisdom 206 Conclusion: Madame Verdurin's Croissant 227 Index 233
