Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780691143736)

How happiness became mandatory--and why we should reject the demand to "be happy"

Happiness today is not just a possibility or an option but a requirement and a duty. To fail to be happy is to fail utterly. Happiness has become a religion--one whose smiley-faced god looks down in rebuke upon everyone who hasn't yet attained the blessed state of perpetual euphoria. How has a liberating principle of the Enlightenment--the right to pursue happiness--become the unavoidable and burdensome responsibility to be happy? How did we become unhappy about not being happy--and what might we do to escape this predicament? In Perpetual Euphoria, Pascal Bruckner takes up these questions with all his unconventional wit, force, and brilliance, arguing that we might be happier if we simply abandoned our mad pursuit of happiness.

Gripped by the twin illusions that we are responsible for being happy or unhappy and that happiness can be produced by effort, many of us are now martyring ourselves--sacrificing our time, fortunes, health, and peace of mind--in the hope of entering an earthly paradise. Much better, Bruckner argues, would be to accept that happiness is an unbidden and fragile gift that arrives only by grace and luck.

A stimulating and entertaining meditation on the unhappiness at the heart of the modern cult of happiness, Perpetual Euphoria is a book for everyone who has ever bristled at the command to "be happy."

Author: Pascal Bruckner
ISBN-10: 0691143730
ISBN-13: 9780691143736
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Language: English
Published: 01/30/2011
Pages: 256
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.91lbs
Size: 8.65h x 5.87w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Books & Culture 03/01/2011 pg. 30
Choice 07/01/2011