Happiness by Design [antikvár]

Foreword There are two central issues in the study of happiness (I tend to prefer the label of subjective well-being). The first is a classic distinction, which goes back at least to Aristotle, between two views of the good life: a life of pleasure, contentment, and other positive feelings, or one that is well-lived and meaningful. A clear choice of one over the other has its problems. A preference for joy over meaning gets you labeled a hedonist, which is not a compliment. On the other hand, you are properly called a scold if you proclaim that pleasure is frivolous and that only virtue and meaning matter. How should you define happiness if you wish to be neither a hedonist nor a scold? The other great question about happiness is how to measure it. Should we study how people feel as they go about their life, whether they mostly experience happiness or misery? Or should we ask people to stop and think about their life, and report whether or not they are satisfied with it? The two questions appear to be related. It seems natural to use measurements of life satisfaction to study whether people find meaning in their life, and to identify happy feelings by measuring ongoing experience. That was also my view for many years, but Paul Dolan has a different idea. To begin with, he is much more interested in people's experiences of life than in their evaluations of their life. The novel idea is to consider