This article comes from “Figaro Magazine”
March 20 was the International Day of Happiness.
“A day to be happy, of course!”,
say the United Nations on their website. Of course not! Is there any idea more absurd than that of happiness? Because, everyone has their own, this idea is never the same. It cannot therefore be a common or generic idea. There is therefore no possible definition of happiness. But in this case, what were we trying in vain to name like that? An aspiration, they say. Certainly, but for what? To “a state of complete, stable and lasting satisfaction”, according to an aberrant definition, unfortunately in use.
Aberrant, because if we define happiness by the satisfaction of desire and make it a right, why would we prohibit pedophilia? Let's go further: what happens to desire when its satisfaction is "complete"? He disappears, taking with him the happiness of which he was the condition. Being happy would therefore consist of ceasing to be happy. But we will say, desire can be reborn. Sure, but then there is nothing less “stable” than desire unless it remains unsatisfied. You would therefore have to be unhappy to be happy. Strange consequences! Finally, what does “sustainable” mean when we are mortal?
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Nothing! Should we not therefore suppress desire since, satisfied or not, it only generates evil? Either. But then we would only obtain a negative definition of happiness: an absence of pain. So an absence of joy. An apathetic, detached quietude. An ataraxia dear to the Stoics. A taste of deep, continuous sedation.