The Conquest of Happiness

many readers, I realize, this line of reasoning will fall flat. They will insist that duty is the enemy of happiness and consequently that the best way to have a good life is to escape all forms of duty: Rather than spending our days doing things we have to do, we should spend them doing things we want to do. In chapter 20 I return to this question

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Yes, philosophy is a serious, rigorous academic discipline, with a lot of people reading Wittgenstein in the original German and pontificating away in a paywalled journal article. But it’s also, I think, a discipline that is meant to resonate with our ordinary lives, our real lives outside the ivory tower. In our real lives, we’re falling in love a... See more

Philosophy was concerned with how best to live, and there was no shortage of thinkers ready to pass on their wisdom. It was a thing of the streets. Today, philosophy has become highly academic, concerning itself more with matters of language, logic and metaphysics, rather than with the business of living well. It would be unusual now for a philosop

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