{"product_id":"mourning-happiness-vivasvan-soni-9780801448171","title":"Mourning Happiness","description":"\u003cp\u003eFor many eighteenth-century thinkers, happiness was a revolutionary new idea filled with the promise of the Enlightenment. However, Vivasvan Soni argues that the period fails to establish the importance of happiness as a guiding idea for human practice, generating our modern sentimental idea of happiness. \u003ci\u003eMourning Happiness\u003c\/i\u003e shows how the eighteenth century's very obsession with happiness culminates in the political obsolescence of the idea.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSoni explains that this puzzling phenomenon can only be comprehended by studying a structural transformation of the idea of happiness at the level of narrative form. Happiness is stripped of its ethical and political content, Soni demonstrates, when its intimate relation to narrative is destroyed. This occurs, paradoxically, in some of the most characteristic narratives of the period: eighteenth-century novels including \u003ci\u003ePamela, The Vicar of Wakefield\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eJulie\u003c\/i\u003e; the pervasive sentimentalism of the time; Kant's ethics; and the political thought of Rousseau and Jefferson.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor Soni, the classical Greek idea of happiness--epitomized by Solon's proverb \"Call no man happy until he is dead\"--opens the way to imagining a properly secular conception of happiness, one that respects human finitude and mortality. By analyzing the story of Solon's encounter with Croesus, Attic funeral orations, Greek tragedy, and Aristotle's ethics, Soni explains what it means to think, rather than feel, a happiness available for public judgment, rooted in narrative, unimaginable without a relationship to community, and irreducible to an emotional state. Such an ideal, Soni concludes, would allow for a radical reenvisioning of a politics that takes happiness seriously and responds to our highest aspirations rather than merely keeping our basest motivations in check.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Vivasvan Soni\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0801448174\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780801448171\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Cornell University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/15\/2010\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 552\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 2.05lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.30h x 6.30w x 1.60d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChoice\u003c\/i\u003e 06\/01\/2011\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eReference and Research Bk News\u003c\/i\u003e 02\/01\/2011 pg. 10","brand":"Vivasvan Soni","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":44059729985791,"sku":"9780801448171","price":60.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_3b09d4fc-cadb-43bf-b030-5968e1b249cf.jpg?v=1685059986","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/mourning-happiness-vivasvan-soni-9780801448171","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}