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Yeah back in the day the pursuit of happiness used to be a vice, hedonism almost. Now it's seen as the ultimate life purpose, wtf.
by KaoruAoiShiho 6y ago
Yeah back in the day the pursuit of happiness used to be a vice, hedonism almost. Now it's seen as the ultimate life purpose, wtf.
- bladegash 6y agoBack in what day? Aristotle spent considerable time explaining how to achieve eudaimonia. In more recent history, humanist psychologists (e.g., Maslow, Rogers, etc.) have suggested people have an inbuilt tendency towards self actualization (which is roughly equivalent to happiness). I’m sure there are many more examples, but I find it unlikely that happiness has been seriously considered as a vice.
- n4r9 6y agoPleasure (i.e. self-reported, short-term happiness) and actualisation/flourishing seem to be very different things to me. Or at least that's one of the lessons I learned from the novel Brave New World.
- bladegash 6y agoI haven’t read the book you mentioned, but from my opinion derived after studying Maslow and Rogers, is that actualization refers to the result of factors leading to a fully functioning human, and by proxy, a happy/content/at peace one. If you ever get a chance, look into some of Maslow’s explanations on the characteristics of an individual who has self-actualizated. There are other interesting humanistic psychologists such as Dabrowski that are fascinating as well.
- n4r9 6y ago> happy/content/at peace Is that the same as immediate pleasure though?
- CM30 6y agoNot sure about that. Utilitarianism was around for a pretty long time, and I'm sure folks like Jeremy Bentham would probably disagree that the pursuit of happiness is/was a vice.