The Promise Of Happiness

Author : Sara Ahmed
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 082239278X
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.81/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Promise of Happiness written by Sara Ahmed and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-06 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Promise of Happiness is a provocative cultural critique of the imperative to be happy. It asks what follows when we make our desires and even our own happiness conditional on the happiness of others: “I just want you to be happy”; “I’m happy if you’re happy.” Combining philosophy and feminist cultural studies, Sara Ahmed reveals the affective and moral work performed by the “happiness duty,” the expectation that we will be made happy by taking part in that which is deemed good, and that by being happy ourselves, we will make others happy. Ahmed maintains that happiness is a promise that directs us toward certain life choices and away from others. Happiness is promised to those willing to live their lives in the right way. Ahmed draws on the intellectual history of happiness, from classical accounts of ethics as the good life, through seventeenth-century writings on affect and the passions, eighteenth-century debates on virtue and education, and nineteenth-century utilitarianism. She engages with feminist, antiracist, and queer critics who have shown how happiness is used to justify social oppression, and how challenging oppression causes unhappiness. Reading novels and films including Mrs. Dalloway, The Well of Loneliness, Bend It Like Beckham, and Children of Men, Ahmed considers the plight of the figures who challenge and are challenged by the attribution of happiness to particular objects or social ideals: the feminist killjoy, the unhappy queer, the angry black woman, and the melancholic migrant. Through her readings she raises critical questions about the moral order imposed by the injunction to be happy.

Author : Alexander Nehamas
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691148651
Total Pages : 198 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Only a Promise of Happiness written by Alexander Nehamas and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-17 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book imparts the fundamental legal understanding required for the purchase and sale of marketing rights for publishing house products. The aim is to enable the reader to competently deal with publishing contracts of every kind. Specific areas of focus include classic copyright and publishing law, the role of collecting societies, issues related to subsidiary rights and their exploitation, as well as questions regarding royalties.

Author : Randy Alcorn
Publisher : NavPress
ISBN 13 : 149641151X
Total Pages : 65 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

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Download or read book God's Promise of Happiness written by Randy Alcorn and published by NavPress. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Think God doesn’t want you to be happy? Think again. We know that we will experience unimaginable joy and happiness in Heaven, but that doesn’t mean we can’t also experience joy and happiness here on earth. In God’s Promise of Happiness, bestselling author and noted theologian Randy Alcorn shares select passages and scripture from his latest hardcover release, Happiness, that provide insight, wisdom, and proof positive that God not only wants us to be happy, he commands it!

Author : Betty Neels
Publisher : Harlequin
ISBN 13 : 1459205219
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Promise of Happiness written by Betty Neels and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2011-03-21 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I'M NOT ATTRACTED TO THIN MICE." So stated the urbane Baron Tiele Raukema van den Eck-and as Rebecca Saunders was both thin and mouse-like, she knew exactly where she stood with him! But he had been very kind, rescuing her when she was virtually destitute. He had even found her a job-nursing his mother. The job was enjoyable and well paid, and it took her to Norway and Holland. The result was inevitable-Rebecca fell in love with the baron, and not even the presence of his girlfriend, Nina, could stop her from dreaming.

Author : Justin Cartwright
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 9780312348809
Total Pages : 332 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Promise of Happiness written by Justin Cartwright and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful elegy to the intimacies and idiocies of family, this is a stunning novel that transcends British and American cultures as it dissects them. Told in five voices, it's the story of an apparently ordinary family reunited by the return of its prodigal daughter.

Author : Erin Kaye
Publisher : Avon Books
ISBN 13 : 9781847562043
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Promise of Happiness written by Erin Kaye and published by Avon Books. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Join the McNeill family as they attempt to come together to provide the love and support that they all need - whether they know it or not. Perfect for fans of Maeve Binchy and Cathy Kelly.

Author : Alain De Botton
Publisher : McClelland & Stewart
ISBN 13 : 1551993872
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Architecture of Happiness written by Alain De Botton and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2010-12-03 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling author Alain de Botton considers how our private homes and public edifices influence how we feel, and how we could build dwellings in which we would stand a better chance of happiness. In this witty, erudite look at how we shape, and are shaped by, our surroundings, Alain de Botton applies Stendhal’s motto that “Beauty is the promise of happiness” to the spaces we inhabit daily. Why should we pay attention to what architecture has to say to us? de Botton asks provocatively. With his trademark lucidity and humour, de Botton traces how human needs and desires have been served by styles of architecture, from stately Classical to minimalist Modern, arguing that the stylistic choices of a society can represent both its cherished ideals and the qualities it desperately lacks. On an individual level, de Botton has deep sympathy for our need to see our selves reflected in our surroundings; he demonstrates with great wisdom how buildings — just like friends — can serve as guardians of our identity. Worrying about the shape of our sofa or the colour of our walls might seem self-indulgent, but de Botton considers the hopes and fears we have for our homes at a new level of depth and insight. When shopping for furniture or remodelling the kitchen, we don’t just consider functionality but also the major questions of aesthetics and the philosophy of art: What is beauty? Can beautiful surroundings make us good? Can beauty bring happiness? The buildings we find beautiful, de Botton concludes, are those that represent our ideas of a meaningful life. The Architecture of Happiness marks a return to what Alain does best — taking on a subject whose allure is at once tantalizing and a little forbidding and offering to readers a completely beguiling and original exploration of the subject. As he did with Proust, philosophy, and travel, now he does with architecture.

Author : Barnabas Piper
Publisher : The Good Book Company
ISBN 13 : 1784985465
Total Pages : 135 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Hoping for Happiness written by Barnabas Piper and published by The Good Book Company. This book was released on 2020-10-01 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone wants to be happy, and we all pursue happiness in different ways. Some people are thrill-seekers; others are homebodies. Some people are loners; others love big families or communities. Some people express things creatively; others consume what is created. Some sing; others listen to music. Whatever we find happiness in, we are united by our desire for work that matters and relationships that fulfil. As Christians, we often fall into the trap of basing our hopes on earthly things, even when we know they only make us happy for a short time. But how are we to experience happiness in this life? How do we avoid expecting too much of earthly things and being disappointed, or expecting too little and becoming cynics? In this book, recovering cynic Barnabas Piper helps us to throw off both the unrealistic expectations that end in disappointment and the guilty sense that Christians are not meant to have fun. He shows how having a clear view of the reality of the fall and the promise of redemption frees us to live a life that's grounded, hopeful and genuinely happy.

Author : Darrin M. McMahon
Publisher : Grove Press
ISBN 13 : 9780802142894
Total Pages : 572 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Happiness written by Darrin M. McMahon and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intellectual history of man's most elusive yet coveted goal. Today, we think of happiness as a natural right, but people haven't always felt this way. Historian McMahon argues that our modern belief in happiness is a recent development, the product of a revolution in human expectations carried out since the eighteenth century. He investigates that fundamental transformation by synthesizing two thousand years of politics, culture, and thought. In ancient Greek tragedy, happiness was considered a gift of the gods. During the Enlightenment men and women were first introduced to the novel prospect that they could--in fact should--be happy in this life as opposed to the hereafter. This recognition of happiness as a motivating ideal led to its consecration in the Declaration of Independence. McMahon then shows how our modern search continues to generate new forms of pleasure, but also, paradoxically, new forms of pain.--From publisher description.

Author : Sara Ahmed
Publisher : Duke University Press Books
ISBN 13 : 9781478005841
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.4X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book What's the Use? written by Sara Ahmed and published by Duke University Press Books. This book was released on 2019-10-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In What’s the Use? Sara Ahmed continues the work she began in The Promise of Happiness and Willful Subjects by taking up a single word—in this case, use—and following it around. She shows how use became associated with life and strength in nineteenth-century biological and social thought and considers how utilitarianism offered a set of educational techniques for shaping individuals by directing them toward useful ends. Ahmed also explores how spaces become restricted to some uses and users, with specific reference to universities. She notes, however, the potential for queer use: how things can be used in ways that were not intended or by those for whom they were not intended. Ahmed posits queer use as a way of reanimating the project of diversity work as the ordinary and painstaking task of opening up institutions to those who have historically been excluded.