Politics of Happiness

Connecting the Philosophical Ideas of Hegel, Nietzsche and Derrida to the Political Ideologies of Happiness

Politics of Happiness

Connecting the Philosophical Ideas of Hegel, Nietzsche and Derrida to the Political Ideologies of Happiness

Ross Abbinnett (Author)

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Description

This unique and engaging study argues that the Western concern with achieving happiness should be understood in terms of its relationship to the political ideologies that have emerged since the Enlightenment. To do so, each chapter examines the place that happiness occupies in the construction of ideologies that have formed the political terrain of the West, including liberalism, postmodernism, socialism, fascism, and religion. Throughout, Hegel's phenomenology, Nietzsche's genealogy, and Derrida's account of deconstruction as reactions to modernization are used to show that the politics of happiness are always a clash of fundamental ideas of belonging, overcoming, and ethical responsibility. Stressing that the concept of happiness lies at the foundation of political movements, the book also looks at its place in the current global order, analyzing the emergence of such ideas as affective democracy that challenge the conventional notions of privatized, acquisitive happiness.

Written in a clear manner, the work will appeal to political theory students and researchers looking for a critical and historical account of contemporary debates about the nature of happiness and ideology.

Introduction: Elements of the Politics of Happiness

1. Liberalism and the Uses of Desire
The Governance of Pain and Pleasure
The Science of Wellbeing
Life Beyond Contentment
Death and the New World Order

2. Postmodernism, or, The Dream of Limitless Excess
Aesthetic Consolations
Art, Irony, and Romanticism
The Tragedy of Pure Culture
Simulacra of Happiness

3. Marxism and the Beautiful Object of Labour
Organic Labour and Species Being
Happiness and Revolutionary Materialism
Work, Servitude, and Ressentiment
Socialism and the Messianic

4. Fascism and the Pleasure of Self-Destruction
The Essence of Fascism
Anxiety and Modern Desire
Reactionary Love and 'The People'
Spectres of Fascism

5. Religion and the Love of the Sacred
Religion in the Disenchanted World
Faith and Enlightenment
Orthodoxy and the Death of God
The Ecstasy of the Sacred

Conclusion: Happiness and Catastrophic Modernity

Product details

Published	14 Mar 2013
Format	Hardback
Edition	1st
Extent	208
ISBN	9781441120816
Imprint	Bloomsbury Academic
Dimensions	Not specified
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

Author

Ross Abbinnett

Ross Abbinnett is Senior Lecturer in Social and Po…

Can we be happy in a world marked by catastrophe? Should we try? What is happiness anyway? In this subtle and entrancing work Ross Abbinnett thinks deeply and profoundly about these questions. He draws on the European philosophical tradition to show why happiness is important and in so doing rescues happiness from the banalities of the new utilitarianism. This is an important book.

Keith Tester, Professor of Sociology, University of Hull, UK
Everybody wants to be happy. Abbinnett's achievement is to connect this interest to the big animals of philosophy and to the big ideas of liberalism , communism and fascism. The result is as stimulating as it is innovative. This is a very interesting book.

Peter Beilharz, Professor of Sociology, La Trobe University, Australia