Perpetual Euphoria : On the Duty to Be Happy

by Bruckner, Pascal; Rendall, Steven

• ISBN13: 9781400835973
• ISBN10: 1400835976
• Copyright: 2011-01-04
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

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? InPerpetual 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 Euphoriais a book for everyone who has ever bristled at the command to "be happy."

Table of Contents

Introduction: Invisible Penitence	p. 1
Paradise Is Where I Am	p. 7
Life as a Dream and a Lie	p. 9
The Golden Age and After?	p. 27
The Disciplines of Beatitude	p. 39
The Kingdom of the Lukewarm, or The Invention of Banality	p. 67
The Bittersweet Saga of Dullness	p. 69
The Extremists of Routine	p. 84
Real Life Is Not Absent	p. 106
The Bourgeoisie, or The Abjection of Well-Being	p. 129
"The Fat, Prosperous Elevation of the Average, the Mediocre"	p. 131
What Is Happiness for Some Is Kitsch for Others	p. 149
If Money Doesn't Make You Happy, Give It Back!	p. 163
Unhappiness Outlawed?	p. 181
The Crime of Suffering	p. 183
Impossible Wisdom	p. 206
Conclusion: Madame Verdurin's Croissant	p. 227
Index	p. 233
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