HAPPINESS IS CONSISTENTLY DESCRIBED as the object of human desire, as being what we aim for, as being what gives purpose, meaning and order to human life. As Bruno S. Frey and Alois Stutzer argue, Everybody wants to be happy. There is probably no other goal in life that commands such a high de gree of consensus (2002: vii). What they are describing is perhaps a consen that happiness is the consensus. Do we consent to happiness? And what are Sb sus th we consenting to, if or when we consent to happiness? ary Even a philosopher such as Immanuel Kant, who places the individuals own happiness outside the domain of ethics, argues that to be happy is necessarily the wish of every finite rational being, and this, therefore, is inevitably a deter mining principle of its faculty of desire (1788 2004: 24). And yet Kant him self suggests rather mournfully that unfortunately, the notion of happiness is so indeterminate that although every human being wishes to attain it, yet he can never say definitely and consistently what it is that he really wishes and wills (1785) 2005: 78). If happiness is what we wish for, it does not mean we know what we wish for in wishing for happiness, Happiness might even con jure its own wish. Or happiness might keep its place as a wish by its failure to be given.
7.Sara Ahmed - The Promise of Happiness niversity Press Books) - libgen.lc.pdf