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129 of 132 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Well researched, well written, January 6, 2006
I just finished reading Happiness: A History. This was a very interesting read, and a very informative one.
In summary, McMahon takes us on a philosophical review of happiness, starting with Socrates, and taking us up to modern times. Along the way, we read the opinions of such notable figures as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Napolean, Locke, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, Adam Smith, Hume, Mill, Weber, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud...to name a few.
I particularly liked the last part of the book, with McMahon pointing out the relevance of Huxley's Brave New World in our own world today. We are a culture that feels happiness is our right, and the search for it extends to recent advances in pharmacology.
In reading this book you will learn about all the various theories and definitions of "happiness," and how each era dealt with it differently. This book is very well researched and presented.
I do have to tell you, Happiness: A History, can be pretty depressing, and there are many parts of the book that are downright bleak. (In an existential kind of way, at least for me.)
Still, highly recommended for those interested in the subject, and for anyone who wants to get a good overview of philosophy through the ages.
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45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Deft, clear, illuminating, July 22, 2006
Everyone wants to be happy, right? Of course. But what, exactly, does it mean to say that?
The concept, "happiness," means drastically different things to different people. McMahon takes us on a grand tour of how the concept has fluctuated and functioned in Western cultures. If you read this book thoughtfully, the notion that "Everyone wants to be happy" becomes less a platitude and more a conundrum.
If you're well educated in Western history, you won't find a lot of new ideas here--but you will find what you already know reorganized and, in the process, illuminated. The stuff you already know is supplemented by minor historical figures and movements you've probably not had occasion to encounter before. The result is thought-provoking.
My two complaints are about the last chapter.
First, McMahon takes a surprisingly uncritical view of contemporary psychiatric and psychological notions--and doesn't even understand them. In fact--as a substantial body of careful scholarship has shown--notions of mental health owe a great deal to the Enlightenment ideology that McMahon had already explained very nicely before getting to this chapter. But suddenly, he accepts mental health as more or less "sui generis," without historical or cultural influences.
And sadly, he often doesn't even understand the psychological literature he cites. For instance, he refers to studies which he interprets as showing that happiness "is [x]% genetic." But that's not what those studies say, or claim to say. They say, rather, that [x]% of the variance (which is a statistical construct, not a trait) among a population (not a characteristic of individuals) is accounted for by genetics--which is a drastically different notion. I was surprised to see McMahon lacking even an elementary understanding of the concept of a heritability quotient, yet using the concept so prominently.
Second, while it may be unfair to expect a historian to shed light on gigantic contemporary problems, McMahon's disquisition on the importance of "meaningfulness" to satisfying lives comes off as unanchored and unhelpful, precisely because he doesn't have anything useful to say about why it's so hard to find meaning in one's life in post-Enlightenment society and what to do about it. I finished this book thinking, "Well, if McMahon's right, the West is just done-for, then. We've eaten our own young--undermined the conditions for meaningful lives, hence for satisfying lives."
Still, the historical analysis, and the deft presentation of massive amounts of material, are well worth your time. And from the cover picture, it looks like McMahon's a youngster--so I don't guess we should expect him to point the way for Western culture to escape its contradictions quite yet in his career!
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44 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It may make you more happy to know more about the history of happiness, February 23, 2006
One basic reason for reading a book about 'The History of Happiness' is to understand what exactly it is that will make us happy. In other words we might read the book as a kind of how- to- do-it book but one in which we have to figure out the 'principles ' of how to do it by ourselves.
I think it is natural and obvious to most people in our world and time that this subject, our own personal happiness, is one of great importance and one we certainly should be most concerned with.
But one of the first findings of this study is that our attitude about happiness which comes so natural to us is not an 'eternal given' is not the way most people felt most of the time throughout history. They were worried more about other things, like surviving, like getting enough food to do it.
As McMahon sees it the modern conception of individual pursuit of happiness began with the Enlightentment in the 17th and 18th centuries. So the Declaration of Independence declares that it is our right to "pursue life, liberty and happiness." This contrasts sharply with the view of the ancient Greeks and Romans who said " that no man can be considered happy until after death'i.e. It is the whole story of a person's life which determines whether they are 'happy ' or 'not'.
In contrast I think of many expressions in the Jewish tradition beginning with Biblical ones in which 'happiness' is connected with 'sitting in the house of the Lord' or with 'trusting in God' and certainly with 'walking in the way of God." I think that is how in the Jewish religious conception the idea of happiness is bound up with doing our duty to others. And that the idea then of pursuing a private happiness apart from others would seem to make little sense. Here I think of the dictum taught me in my childhood by my grandmother ( The good which we put into the life of others, comes back into our own)In other words happiness is less an individual achievement than it is a way of relating to others.
Considering this kind of focus on the ethical life as the way to happiness, I see that McMahon in focusing on 'individual happiness'from the Enlightentment is also most likely connecting the concept of Happiness' development with an increasing secularization, an individualization.
Nonetheless in one section of the work he is cautionary in regard to the focus placed on drug- induced happiness. He seems to side with Leon Kass' dictum that medical treatments are advisable for special sufferings, but that we should not be seeking to eliminate the ups and downs of everyday life.
I would also point out that while most of us tend to absolutize the good of happiness in relation to ourselves, it is clear that happiness, and certainly pleasure are not in and of themselves always good. For after all there are 'evil people' who take pleasure in making others unhappy.
This brings me back to the basic ethical idea that perhaps the greatest happiness we can have is in making others happy, or sharing that happiness with others.
I am sorry that this review has gone so far away from the book, but if any reader is still with me I would like just to share two thoughts about happiness. Once again it is being good doing good for others- making others happy- loving and being loved which are certainly one source of great happiness and good.
Another point that researches of happiness make. It is when we are absorbed in the work or activity which we most care for that we often feel most happy.
In conclusion. This is by all accounts a tremendously rich and interesting work .
Reading it should be a source of enjoyment( perhaps even happiness) to those who do.
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