Regimes of Happiness

Description

A critical reflection on modern notions of happiness.

‘Regimes of Happiness’ is a comparative and historical analysis of how human societies have articulated and enacted distinctive notions of human fulfillment, determining divergent moral, ethical and religious traditions and incommensurate and conflicting understanding of the meaning of the ‘good life’.

Presented in two parts, ‘Regimes of Happiness’ provides a historical view of the way in which Western societies, the descendants of the Latin Roman Empire, created languages and institutions that established specific and occasionally antithetical conceptions of a fulfilled human life or 'happiness' in the first part. The second part explores how non-Western societies and non-Christian religions have conceived and established their own ideals of human perfection. ‘Regimes of Happiness’ is a critical reflection on modern notions of happiness which are typically focused on individual feelings of pleasure.

Introduction: Reflections on Regimes of Happiness, Bryan S. Turner and Yuri Contreras-Véjar; Happiness in the West; A Fragment of Bliss: Augustinian Beatitudo and the Ideal of Atonement, Yuri Contreras-Véjar; Arts of Happiness and Love: Translating Aristotle in the Later Middle Ages, Jessica Rosenfeld; Spiritual Transcendence as the Path to Happiness in a Selection of Old French Texts, Stephanie Grace Petinos; St. Francis and Machiavelli on Happiness and Joy, William J. Connell; The Concept of Happiness Prevents Facile Definitions in the Scottish Enlightenment, Megan Hills; A Path to Eternal Happiness: Convent Life in the United States in the Nineteenth Century, Bernadette McCauley; “Be Joyful Always!” Twenty-First-Century Evangelical Conceptions of Happiness and Trumpist Politics, Joanna Tice-Jen; The Erasmus Program: The Promise of European Happiness, Davide Giuseppe Colasanto; Innovations in the Psychological Study of Happiness: From Mirror Neurons to Mobile Technology, Samantha Birk, Samantha Denefrio and Tracy A. Dennis-Tiwary; Comparative Perspectives; And You Should Be Nothing but Happy: Judaism and the Dual Approach to Joy, Marc Katz; Happiness in Medieval Islamicate Literature: Conceptual and Practical Problems, Anna Akasoy; From Liberation to Happiness: The Making of Modern, Middle-Class Yoga, Shehzad Nadeem; The Pursuit of Happiness in Vietnam, Nguyễn Tuấn Anh and Oscar Salemink; Indigenous and Western Views of Happiness: An Essay on the Politics of Contentment, Colin Samson; A Nineteenth-Century Turning Point: Nietzsche, Weber, Freud and Mill, Bryan S. Turner; Index.

Sujets

• HISTORY
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Religión
• Social theory
• Comparative religion
• Civilization

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 15 mars 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781783088874
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Regimes of Happiness
Regimes of Happiness
Comparative and Historical Studies
Edited by
Yuri Contreras-Vejar, Joanna Tice Jen and Bryan S. Turner
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2019
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
© 2019 Yuri Contreras-Vejar, Joanna Tice Jen, and Bryan S. Turner editorial matter and selection; individual chapters © individual contributors
The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-885-0 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78308-885-0 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Reflections on Regimes of Happiness

Bryan S. Turner and Yuri Contreras-Vejar
Part I Happiness in the West
Chapter One
A Fragment of Bliss: Augustinian Beatitudo and the Ideal of Atonement

Yuri Contreras-Vejar
Chapter Two
Arts of Happiness and Love: Translating Aristotle in the Later Middle Ages

Jessica Rosenfeld
Chapter Three
Spiritual Transcendence as the Path to Happiness in a Selection of Old French Texts

Stephanie Grace Petinos
Chapter Four
On Machiavelli, St. Francis and the Pursuit of Happiness

William J. Connell
Chapter Five
Their Idea of Happiness Prevents Easy Categorization of Scottish Enlightenment Philosophers

Megan Hills
Chapter Six
A Path to Eternal Happiness: Convent Life in the United States in the Nineteenth Century

Bernadette McCauley
Chapter Seven
“Be Joyful Always!”: Twenty-First-Century Evangelical Conceptions of Happiness and Trumpist Politics

Joanna Tice Jen
Chapter Eight
The Erasmus Program: The Promise of European Happiness

Davide Giuseppe Colasanto
Chapter Nine
Innovations in the Psychological Study of Happiness: From Mirror Neurons to Mobile Technology

Samantha Birk, Samantha Denefrio and Tracy A. Dennis-Tiwary
Part II Comparative Perspectives
Chapter Ten
And You Should Be Nothing but Happy: Judaism and the Dual Approach to Joy

Marc Katz
Chapter Eleven
Happiness in Medieval Islamicate Literature: Conceptual and Practical Problems

Anna Akasoy
Chapter Twelve
From Liberation to Happiness: The Making of Modern, Middle-Class Yoga

Shehzad Nadeem
Chapter Thirteen
The Pursuit of Happiness in Vietnam

Oscar Salemink and Nguyê͂n Tuấn Anh
Chapter Fourteen
Indigenous and Western Views of Happiness: An Essay on the Politics of Contentment

Colin Samson
Chapter Fifteen
A Nineteenth-Century Turning Point: Nietzsche, Weber, Freud and Mill

Bryan S. Turner
Index
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We wish to express our gratitude to Chase Robinson, President of the City University of New York, for his support for the Committee for the Study of Religion. We also wish to thank the Committee’s members, whose participation and intellectual generosity were the foundation for these chapters.
Joanna extends love and thanksgiving to her family and wishes to convey her gratitude to her mentors and colleagues from the CUNY Graduate Center and Las Positas College for bringing happiness to the study of politics.
Yuri wishes to thank his wife, Sherrie, and his two beautiful boys, Ilan and Ari, for making his life fulfilled.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Anna Akasoy is professor of Islamic intellectual history at the Graduate Center, the City University of New York. Her area of expertise is medieval history.
Nguyê͂n Tuấn Anh is associate professor at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. The emphasis in his work is on kinship relations and social change in Northern Vietnamese villages. He has recently extended his research to community-based adaptation to climate change.
Samantha Birk is a graduate student in the clinical psychology doctoral program at Temple University. Broadly, she studies the risk factors that contribute to the development of depression and anxiety across the life span.
Davide Giuseppe Colasanto is a PhD candidate in modern european history at the Graduate Center, the City University of New York. He studies the history of sexuality, Fascism and violence during the twentieth century.
William J. Connell is professor of history and holds the La Motta Chair in Italian Studies at Seton Hall University. His latest book is Machiavelli nel Rinascimento italiano.
Yuri Contreras-Vejar is professor of sociology at Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile. Together with Professor Bryan S. Turner, he is the editor of the book series Religion and Society for a reputed publisher.
Samantha Denefrio is a doctoral candidate in behavioral and cognitive neuroscience at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Tracy A. Dennis-Tiwary is professor of psychology and neuroscience at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the codirector of the Hunter College Center for Stress, Anxiety, and Resilience Research and the Center for Health Technology.
Stephanie Grace Petinos is a lecturer of French at Western Carolina University. In 2017–2018, she was a Kingdon Postdoctoral Fellow with the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; she received her PhD in French, with a certificate in Medieval Studies, from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 2016.
Megan Hills is currently a PhD candidate in history at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, focusing on the Scottish Enlightenment, having spent her previous 20 years as a trial lawyer as an AUSA and partner at a law firm. She received her BA in 1988 and MA (English) in 1989 from Georgetown University; JD in 1992 from Stanford University Law School; and MA (History) in 2014 from CUNY City College.
Marc Katz is the rabbi at Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, NJ. He is the author of the book The Heart of Loneliness: How Jewish Wisdom Can Help You Cope and Find Comfort .
Bernadette McCauley is professor emerita of history at Hunter College, the City University of New York.
Shehzad Nadeem is associate professor of sociology at Lehman College, the City University of New York. He is the author of Dead Ringers: How Outsourcing Is Changing the Way Indians Understand Themselves .
Jessica Rosenfeld is associate professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of Ethics and Enjoyment in Late Medieval Poetry: Love after Aristotle (2011).
Oscar Salemink is a professor of anthropology at the University of Copenhagen and adjunct professor at the Institute of Religion, Politics and Society of the Australian Catholic University (Melbourne).
Colin Samson is a sociologist based at the University of Essex. He has worked with the Innu peoples of the Labrador-Quebec peninsula since 1994. His book A Way of Life That Does Not Exist: Canada and the Extinguishment of the Innu (2003) won the Pierre Savard Award.
Joanna Tice Jen is a member of the political science faculty at Las Positas College in Livermore, California. She received her PhD in political science from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2017 for her dissertation, “Thine Is the Kingdom: The Political Thought of 21st Century Evangelicalism.”
Bryan S. Turner is professor of sociology at the Australian Catholic University, emeritus professor at the Graduate Center, the City University of New York, USA, and honorary professor, Social Science Faculty, Potsdam University, Germany. He won the Max Planck Award in 2015.
INTRODUCTION: REFLECTIONS ON REGIMES OF HAPPINESS
Bryan S. Turner and Yuri Contreras-Vejar
This book started as a conversation about successful societies and human development. It was originally based on a simple idea—it would be unusual if, in a society that might be reasonably deemed as successful, its citizens were deeply unhappy. This combination—successful societies and happy citizens—raised immediate and obvious problems. How might one define “success” when dealing, for example, with a society as large and as complex as the United States? We ran into equally major problems when trying to understand “happiness.” Yet one constantly hears political analysts talking about the success or failure of various democratic institutions. In ordinary conversations one constantly hears people talking about being happy or unhappy. In the everyday world, conversations about living in a successful society or about being happy do not appear to cause bewilderment or confusion. “Ordinary people” do not appear to find questions like—is your school successful or are you happily married?—meaningless or absurd. Yet, in the social sciences, both “successful societies” and “happy li