Customer Reviews

Happiness: A History

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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.

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!

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.

Happiness: A History is a beautiful book for people who enjoy reading. It is not a self-help manual, so if you are looking for one simple message or point, then this is not your book. Instead, McMahon offers a great many insights, showing how and why earthly happiness began to replace otherwordly salvation in the eighteenth century, and why happiness has since become our modern God. McMahon tells this story by beginning with the ancient Greeks and then moving forward to the present. Along the way he gives the reader a short course in the history of Western Civilization by looking at what great writers and artists and philosophers had to say on the subject of happiness, and pointing out things like the relationship between happiness and luck and why the pursuit of happiness can often be counter-productive. The writing is clear, and the book as a whole is insightful, often poignant and funny. It can be challenging in places, but it repays the effort, and then some. I loved it.

The proliferation of new books about "Happiness" (many of the "how to" category) and the numerous reviews of what has been written in the past about its "pursuit", may just show that either we do not know, or have failed to achieve that supposedly ultimate goal of human existence. The thouroughly documented and elegantly written "History of Happiness" by Darrin McMahon is not one of the crowd. It is brilliantly written and a pleasure to read, even by those who "don't care" (aren't there any?) about happiness and/or the literature concerning it. Starting with the meaning of the word (related to happening, haphazard and perhaps)we go through ancient philosophers, religious leaders, medieval scholars, to end up with modern democracies and the promises of the "false prophets", political innovators and dictatorial demagogues. Prof. McMahon is not only a spectacularly well-informed academic but an inspiring and brilliant light on a subject that - well - is truly everyone's concern.

This was the best book I've read in the last year. It imparts information in a manner which is comprehensible and complete without using esoteric philosophical jargon. It is very accesible for the ordinary reader while covering complex subjects.

I took a year long course titled The Human Situation. The first semester consisted of antiquity and the second semester studied modernity. Darrin McMahon's book Happiness would have been the perfect capstone - or perhaps appetizer - for the course. He leads the reader on a wondering tour of the last two and a half centuries of happiness, stopping along the way to lucidly explain who the great minds were, what they believed, and how they moved the concept of what happiness is and how it is that one can achieve it. Starting with ancient Greeks, McMahon makes his way to the modern "prozac nation" with stops at many interesting times, places and people. Among the sojourn the reader will be introduced to the hedonists Marqee de Sade and La Mettrie, the founders of communism and the American Founding Fathers with their "pursuit of happiness," and some of the more inaccessible German philosophers. Happiness reaches a nice compromise between a truly academic paper, which bores all people including those who have to read PhD dissertations, and making the subject too simple, which by the nature of the subject matter it simply cannot be reduced to. McMahon does not have the answer to happiness, he has them all. He has laid them out on a table for you to inspect, peruse, ridicule, consider, and adopt. While John Stuart Mill will tell you as soon as you "ask yourself whether you are happy . . . you cease to be so," if you are going to ask, let McMahon guide you through the dialectic.

This book is an interesting depiction of the different eras of the worlds history as it relates to happiness. The authour says we have for ages believed that Happiness was and is a retrevable item that it is available for all who sought her. And indeed it is. It is as we make it to be as far back as the Romans and Tutankumun.
If you are seeking a light reading with no depth don't read this spectacular thesis. But if you want to make a study of Happiness in History and then create your own thoughts,by all means this is the ONE!

This is a terrific book, and an amusing, provocative, and delightfully lilting read. McMahon echoes the suggestion of Paul Johnson that Enlightenment rationalism's undermining of religioous faith left a vacuum that has been filled by worship of artists and intellectuals who, we are to imagine, feel deeply, and both suffer and exult so much more transcendently than we Muggles. While the first two-thirds of the book are a treat themselves, it is the final third that bears the book's importance. It is here where McMahon exposes the many hollow spaces that we delude ourselves to be the residences of "happiness."

If I find a good book, I make a lot of notes. This is such a book. I made plenty of notes. What was new for me was the popularity of happiness books during the "dark" middle ages. I have to admire the thoroughness the writer has done his job. Major philosophical and theological ideas are nicely represented. I do not give easily five stars as you can find out, but this book really deserves it.