DHUM 25A21 - Happiness, Health, and Well-Being: Practical Philosophy – Ancient and Modern

Our current moment is typified by a proliferating set of crises. We find ourselves besieged by inter alia terrorism, climate change, technological accelerationism, economic precariousness, nativism and populism, rampant inequality and the real and symbolic violence that accompanies it. Faced with this, we need to rethink how philosophy can give us the conceptual tools needed to tarry with the complexities of individual/social life. Perhaps, we can rediscover philosophy as a way of life and the political vocation of philosophy. Perhaps, we can return to philosophy's original ambition - the quest for human flourishing. This course performs micro-genealogies of various strands of “practical philosophy” and “philosophical practice,” both ancient and modern. Practical philosophy is not “simple” and we will remain rigorous in our inquiry into the “big problems:” What is the happiness and the good life? Happiness…at what expense? What is the origin of suffering? What is justice? What is beauty? What is love? What constitutes social health? What are the conditions for freedom? What is my relationship to reason and feelings? What is a body? What is my nature and my place in nature? What constitutes my responsibility to the other? How are my anxieties embedded in socio-historical conditions? What is the future? How do I engage with death, illness, and finitude? Should I eat my dog etc.? This course will not make you happy. Rather it is designed to critically examine, how happiness has been imagined in the past and the present (from virtue and duty to wellness and bliss).

This course will not make you happy. Rather it is designed to critically examine, how happiness has been imagined in the past and the present (from virtue and duty to wellness and bliss).

General Background in Humanities and Social Sciences

Lectures and Discussion

Participation & Engagement - 15 percent

Midterm Paper 42.5 percent

Final Paper 42.5 percent.