The world in which we live today is a world of commodities and not a world of freedom. It is a world of consumption and not a world of philosophy or happiness.
Thus, the philosophers of this time declare (1);
Where philosophers see that philosophy is the giver of happiness;
Because it is a rebellion against lived reality, and an attempt to understand it and dismantle its intuitions in order to change it. As for today's world, it is not ready;
Neither the idea of revolution nor the idea of happiness.
This is "because a world of goods can only give us happiness of satisfaction: the satisfaction of our infinite desires. Therefore, no pile of goods can give us true happiness. It is a world that can only produce false happiness."
(2)
But what is the concept of happiness? Does happiness result from contentment? Is happiness achieved by satisfying our instincts and fulfilling our desires?
The concept of happiness today seems to need to be redefined, and re-introduced to people;
Made simple to complex, we all want to be happy;
But when someone asks us a simple question, "What is happiness?"
we cannot answer;
Because the concepts were mixed and complicated, between happiness, contentment and well-being, relieving pain, escaping death, searching for a dignified life, and the pursuit of livelihood and life supplements.
All of this has distorted what we can see as “happiness” that deserves to live. If this is not achieved and there is no meaning in life, it adds a dimension of pleasure and contentment.
What is the use of life?
Philosopher Alain Badiou argues that happiness is essentially based on dissatisfaction and dissatisfaction with the system of the world as it is.
Here Badiou objects to the Stoic conception of happiness, which presupposes a form of "cosmic sympathy," reconciliation with our destiny, and contentment with who we are.
Happiness is not the “love of fate,” as Nietzsche said, nor is it the fulfillment of a moral duty, as Kant envisions it.
However, Badiou does not object - only - to the old philosophical conceptions of the Stoics, for example, and the neoclassicism of Kant and Nietzsche, those who do not believe that philosophy can give us happiness;
Rather, he also objects to the liberal conception of happiness as satisfaction.
For Badiou, happiness is universal, while gratification is individual and selfish.
Happiness can re-establish desire (3), whether on the level of philosophy or in real life, while satisfaction only satisfies narrow individual needs that turn man into a means in the great machine of consumption of the savage capitalist world.
Philosopher Alain Badiou
As for the universal values that prevail in the world now;
It is the universality of money, global trade, war agendas, oil, competition, competition, and competition in appearances and fashion.
Only money is the only universal value.
Our world is a world devoid of the desire for adventure.
Everything about it is based on account and security.
It is a world that is not fit for any betting or any risk;
Because no one in it is ready to leave its existence hostage to coincidences and sudden and fleeting encounters.
The task of philosophy - according to Badiou in our present age - is to restore true happiness from all forms of vulgarity of the concept of happiness in a world in which human beings have regressed to consumer figures in the machine of savage capitalism.
In the world of nauseating merchandise, the world of freaks that cross this great market, the philosopher regains his health and takes the floor again to tell us: What is happiness?
Is there true happiness and false happiness?
How can philosophy lead us again to the attainment of happiness?!
The mission of philosophy since its inception has been to explore the best ways of life, the best ways to attain happiness, and the most successful ways to search for a better world.
Despite the existence of the concept of happiness among other ancient philosophers, the concept of happiness according to Plato could be the first complete concept (4). Happiness, in Plato’s view, “must be based on a certain kind of harmony and harmony between desires and goals in the case of their multiplicity.” Plato considers happiness to be the supreme good;
It is based on the harmonious organization of all things in ordinary life;
This enables a person to fulfill his or her role in life.
Aristotle's definition of happiness differs from Plato's. Aristotle sees it as "pleasure," which he considers the absence of pain and inconvenience.
As for Aristotle, he defines happiness according to its virtue, and if there is more than one virtue for the soul;
It is according to its greatest and most perfect virtue, and he believes that “happiness is pleasure, or at least that it is closely connected with it - that is, pleasure - and pleasure in turn is interpreted as a conscious absence of pain and annoyance” and he limits virtue “to philosophical thinking or contemplation. And he arrives at the conclusion It means that the happiest life is the life devoted to this mental activity. Thus, contemplation becomes the ultimate goal or goal over the happy life.”
(5)
It is, to him, "the supreme good of philosophy itself."
In this it contradicts the Platonic definition of happiness;
Where it should not be sought in a paradoxical world, but humans can realize the status of happiness by their actions.
And that is realized by virtue that leads us to happiness through pleasure and goodness.
Virtue lies in what Aristotle calls moderation in actions.
(6)
As for Epicurus and the Stoics, they often disagreed, and these and those rarely agreed.
In the view of Epicurus, goodness is pleasure, and pleasure in turn is interpreted as a conscious absence of pain and annoyance, and he - also - confirms that this is what human beings strive for from childhood onwards, and that all people struggle for this pleasure and for it alone, and there is no a person who rejects, hates, or avoids pleasure for its own sake;
but rather;
Because there are painful consequences for those who do not know how to seek pleasure in a rational way. (7)
On the other hand, we find the Stoics "affirm that the only good of a person is virtue, including justice."
They also believed that the end of human existence is compatibility with nature, and Epicurus believes that a form of pleasure lies in the absence of pain and anxiety, while Stoicism viewed tranquility as implying the view that accidental life events should not occupy us and that they are inevitable and necessary parts of a system The universe, as Epicurus asserts, is a kind of experience, meaning pleasure, which he defines as freedom from disturbance, and he believes that “the life lived should involve as little disturbance as possible” (8).
Nietzsche holds that "the collision of desires, not their harmony", can be desirable;
In it, desires are - so - when they are a source of a certain kind of joy
But Nietzsche - unlike Plato, Aristotle and other philosophers - states that "the collision of desires, not their harmony", can be desirable;
Desires are likewise when they are a source of a certain kind of joy, and a catalyst for that kind of achievement that Nietzsche sees “which he considers enormous and influential, and he goes to the point that conflicting goals prevents life from settling in a state of boring routine, and resisting that kind of happiness that he wants Most People".
(9)
As for the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas appeared, and this philosopher and before him Augustine are almost considered the most prominent philosophers of the Middle Ages, and they are the true representatives of the Christian religion and Christian theology throughout the Middle Ages. Regarding human happiness, Thomas Aquinas says, “The complete human happiness lies in seeing the divine essence, and says Augustine that the recompense of virtue will be God Himself who bestows virtue, and who has dedicated himself to us, and there is none better or greater than him; God will be the object of our desire and we shall see that he is infinite, loved without limit and tirelessly glorified.”
(10)
As for Spinoza’s Book of Ethics (1632-1677), we find that happiness “is the bliss that we realize when we are freed from the bondage of passions and from superstitions and prejudices.”
Spinoza proceeds from defining man as a “desire in his essence.” Therefore, his only destiny is joy in existence, and that man, according to him, is able to be master of his desires through thinking, and therefore he can realize the joy that - without sacrificing desire - can lead to bliss;
That is, to complete and lasting joy.
(11)
English philosopher and legal scholar Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
Jeremy Bentham and Stuart Mill argue that by defining happiness as pleasure, albeit in different ways, they help provide us with a standard for correct behaviour.
Bentham's social project was much more detailed than it is Epicurus' project, "This project was portrayed at first sight as a legal project, in order to show that the system of laws should produce as much pleasure as possible, and it begins by equating happiness with pleasure" Bentham went In his attachment to the laws more than others;
He links the happiness of individuals with the happiness of the group when he says, "The happiness of the individuals, which comprises the happiness of the group, is the end and the only end that the legislator should take into consideration."
(12)
Bentham and Mill say that the correct behavior is the behavior that brings about the greatest happiness to the largest possible number of people, and Bentham “believes that the good is the experience of pleasure in the most common sense of the concept of pleasure, which is the meaning that he included a lot in the context of freedom from disturbance; he sees that one can He is happy in proportion to the amount of pleasure he can have.
British philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
The philosophical question about happiness continued to suffer from a deep deficiency that Kant discovered in the Critique of Practical Reason between those who believe that happiness lies in pleasures, as Epicurus goes to, and those who believe that happiness lies in virtue;
That is, rational virtue - in particular - is the Platonic Aristotelian tradition that makes the philosopher the most capable of achieving happiness, a tradition that he resumed from the Greeks, Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, but in different forms and in a different culture horizon.
According to al-Farabi’s words, “happiness is the greatest of goodness,” as part of a conception of a virtuous city that “needs theoretical and moral virtues.”
This definition resumes in a different way the old Aristotelian definition as based on a necessary relationship between happiness and the acquisition of wisdom.
Which makes al-Farabi “the attainment of the first intelligibles for man is his first completion, and these intelligibles were made for him to use in order to become to his final completion, and that is happiness.”
(13)
As for Imam Al-Ghazali, he says, “Pleasure and happiness for the children of Adam is the knowledge of God Almighty,” and he continues, “Know that the happiness, pleasure and comfort of everything are in accordance with his nature. With this characteristic, the pleasure of the heart is specific to knowing God Almighty, because the heart was created for it.
(14)
Philosopher Alain Badiou argues that to be happy;
We must adhere to the philosophical desire in order to distinguish true happiness from the happiness of satisfaction:
“We are in dire need of some idea or the value of what we call truth, with which we can take risks in order to stop this crazy speed of the civilization of the absolute commodity, and this means that we have to hold on to a new idea of truth and the cosmic together.”
Whereas, philosophy is a rational rebellion in the sense of a cosmic bet to confront this contemporary world based on fragments, fragments, and specializations.
By this, he means that philosophy is inhabited in its depth by an unbridled desire to revolt against the prevailing axioms, beliefs and policies.
Accordingly, the desire in philosophy is - since Plato - a desire for a revolution of thought against the prevailing perceptions about true happiness and the happiness of satisfying desires.
(15th)
However, philosophy here is not in the sense of “empty philosophizing”;
Rather, in its deepest sense, which is knowledge and asking real questions about knowledge, and the matter here is not limited to academic knowledge;
Rather, it is related to daily knowledge, and what a person faces in his life and deserves to be asked about questions that clarify the human condition in this world. Reaching for happiness begins when a person is honest with himself.
The pursuit of truth is the second idea put forward by Alain Badiou to reach happiness;
The person who lives amid hypocrisy and lies;
up to the point of lying to himself;
He will never be happy, and for Badiou “we need an unconditional stopping point in order to break this endless chain of commodity-exchange society. Nothing can stop this endless luster of the flow of goods and the whirlpool of consumer desires other than a radical demand or a strategic idea that is completely contrary to the logic of the consumer world.” based on gratification and selfish and ignorant goods together.
"We are in dire need of some idea or the value of what we call truth, with which we can take a risk in order to stop this crazy speed of the civilization of the absolute commodity. This means that we have to hold on to a new idea of truth and cosmology together, in order to bet on a new form of universalism. against the universality of terror that produced only outbreaks.”
(16)
To change the world is to ask the impossible with the same reality, the real reality, in order to face the false reality.
Thus, the definition of true happiness is as envisioned by Badiou
Badiou's third thought is "To be happy is to want to change the world."
What does it mean to change the world then?
Badiou answers that all of our definitions are inaccurate, so perhaps it would be more effective to combine the two slogans "Be realistic... Demand the impossible" with Jacques Lacan's curious sentence "Reality is the impossible".
To change the world is - then - to ask the impossible with what is the same reality, the real reality in order to face the false reality.
Thus, the definition of true happiness is, as Badiou envisions it, "Happiness is always the pleasure of the impossible."
(17)
Happiness, then, is a feeling that is always possible;
It does not lie in the happiness of the affluent and the satiated;
Rather, it lies in the joy of life when we love, when we create art, and when we are happy with the birth of a truth.
We rejoice at every joyful change that happens to us.
that we should not contemplate existence and enjoy the warmth of the arms of the comfort space and routine;
Rather, we must always go to meet the event and learn new.
something happened;
He is the one who changes the world order.
In a world that almost despairs of his ability to be happy, with the kinds of misery and misery that occur in it, happiness remains - as Imam Al-Ghazali told us - in man's knowledge of himself and his heart;
Hence his knowledge of his Creator, for the heart is created to be happy to get close to his Creator, and is innate in the pleasure of pure spiritual knowledge;
But the philosopher Zygmunt Baumann tells us that happiness is a struggle and not a reward, an enduring and not always joyful, and this is the secret of life.
But what does modern science tell us about how people understand the feeling of happiness?