PHIL 253 Happiness
Many philosophers argue that happiness is the highest good, but there is still a great deal of disagreement as to how happiness ought to be defined. Moreover, some normative ethical theories (e.g. Utilitarianism, Virtue Theory) make happiness central to our decisions about how best to solve ethical dilemmas, offering varying accounts of how happiness is to be achieved. In order to make sense of these theories, we will examine attempts to answer the following questions: Is happiness pleasure, satisfaction, contentment, virtue, or something else? Is happiness central to a life worth living, and how difficult is happiness to achieve? Must one be moral in order to be happy? In addition to these questions, this course will examine what contemporary neuroscience and psychology might be able to tell us about how happiness could be measured, and the extent to which human beings are able to judge their own happiness. Prerequisite: None