Perpetual Euphoria : : On the Duty to Be Happy / / Pascal Bruckner.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Bruckner, Pascal,
• TeilnehmendeR: Rendall, Steven.
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2011]; ©2011
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Edition: Course Book
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (256 p.)
• Other title: Frontmatter --; Contents --; Introduction. Invisible Penitence --; Part I. Paradise Is Where I Am --; Chapter one. Life as a Dream and a Lie --; Chapter two. The Golden Age and After? --; Chapter 3. The Disciplines of Beatitude --; Part II. The Kingdom of the Lukewarm, or The Invention of Banality --; Chapter four. The Bittersweet Saga of Dullness --; Chapter five. The Extremists of Routine --; Chapter six. Real Life Is Not Absent --; Part III. The Bourgeoisie, or The Abjection of Well-Being --; Chapter seven. The Fat, Prosperous Elevation of the Average, the Mediocre" --; Chapter eight. What Is Happiness for Some Is Kitsch for Others --; Chapter nine. If Money Doesn't Make You Happy, Give It Back! --; Part IV. Unhappiness Outlawed? --; Chapter ten. The Crime of Suffering --; Chapter eleven. Impossible Wisdom --; Conclusion. Madame Verdurin's Croissant --; Index
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9781400835973; 9783110442502
• DOI: 10.1515/9781400835973
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: Pascal Bruckner.

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."