Philosophy of (more) Happiness
Successor site to the Philosophy of Happiness blog (http://philoshap.blogspot.com/) that supported PHIL 3160 at MTSU, 2011-2019. The course returns Fall 2025.
PHIL 3160 – Philosophy of Happiness
Up@dawn 2.0
Sunday, July 6, 2025
Achieving hard things AND experiencing joy in the process
Thursday, July 3, 2025
Thinking off-loaded
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
Tiny little joys
"...MaryCatherine McDonald, a trauma researcher and author of "The Joy Reset," uses another term for those bright bits of happiness: tiny little joys, or T.L.J.s.
Dr. McDonald's clients have told her that their T.L.J.s include the first sip of coffee in the morning...
nyt
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
Yale's coursera "Science of Well-Being" course with Laurie Santos
Questionnaire... Use Your Strengths to Boost Happiness...
Americans Most Unhappy People in the World.
Martin Seligman, Flourish: A New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being - and how to Achieve Them (a fantastic overview of positive psychology from the father of this discipline)
Ed Diener, Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth (a nice introduction to the science of well-being from one of its pioneer
Ryan Niemiec & Robert McGrath, Power of Character Strengths: Activate and Ignite Your Positive Personality (an official guide on Character Strengths)
Daniel Lerner & Alan Schlechter, U Thrive: How to Succeed in College (and Life) (a book aimed towards undergraduates which covers many of the rewirements taught in this course)
Martin Seligman’s TED Talk - The new era of positive psychology
Read Robert Emmons’ book on the science of gratitude
thinking about you guys today, and some of the problems you guys experience today, is that if you look at the rates from 1967, they're kind of flipped. So, only for about 40 percent of people thought you need to
be very well off financially back in the 60s. But a lot of them thought you needed to develop a meaningful philosophy on life. So, again this interesting flip about how important finances are. And that raises this question about whether or not, money is really going to make us happier? ...
Never Worry Alone
ROBERT WALDINGER
JUN 25, 2025
In a culture that often celebrates self-reliance and individual achievement, the simple advice to "never worry alone" might seem counterintuitive. Yet, this phrase carries profound wisdom, rooted in both evolutionary biology and decades of research on human flourishing. As social creatures, we are wired to connect, to share, and to support one another. When we isolate ourselves in times of stress, we cut off one of the most powerful tools for resilience: our relationships.
The Harvard Study of Adult Development, which I have the privilege of directing, has been tracking lives for over 85 years. Its findings are clear: the quality of our relationships is the single most important factor in determining our health and happiness. This isn't just about having people around us—it's about the depth and warmth of those connections... (continues)
Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Winning the cosmic lottery
"On the whole, I don’t fear death. Instead, I fear a life where I could have accomplished more. An epitaph worthy of a tombstone comes from the nineteenth-century educator Horace Mann: 'I beseech you to treasure up in your hearts these my parting words. Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.'
Our primal urge to keep looking up is surely greater than our primal urge to keep killing one another. If so, then human curiosity and wonder, the twin chariots of cosmic discovery, will ensure that starry messages continue to arrive. These insights compel us, for our short time on Earth, to become better shepherds of our own civilization. Yes, life is better than death. Life is also better than having never been born. But each of us is alive against stupendous odds. We won the lottery—only once. We get to invoke our faculties of reason to figure out how the world works. But we also get to smell the flowers. We get to bask in divine sunsets and sunrises, and gaze deeply into the night skies they cradle. We get to live, and ultimately die, in this glorious universe."
"Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization" by Neil deGrasse Tyson: https://a.co/9AHEXyH
A view from above
— Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization by Neil deGrasse Tyson
https://a.co/by8i9Dw
Friday, June 20, 2025
Materialist spirit
— The Miraculous from the Material: Understanding the Wonders of Nature by Alan Lightman
https://a.co/7ZfKc4r
Tuesday, June 17, 2025
The best books on Happiness Through Negative Thinking recommended by Oliver Burkeman
Sometimes it is the very pursuit of happiness that stops us from achieving it. Put simply, I think many of the techniques that claim to enable us to achieve happiness don’t work. They are too focused on strenuously stamping out any trace of negativity, rather than cultivating the conditions of real happiness. The more complex and subtler idea is that happiness is impossible to aim for directly. I’m not just talking about all the bad self-help books out there – I think the “cult of optimism” is broader than that. We are all to some extent in its grip, whenever we think that the way to achieve whatever we’re trying to achieve is to go after it vigorously, and that if we believe it will all work out fine then it will... (continues)
Achieving hard things AND experiencing joy in the process
… one of the most important and powerful sources of reward and resilience: our connections to others. Our brains are equipped with a so...
-
Let's introduce ourselves, fellow Happiness scholars/pursuers. I'm Dr. Oliver, I've been teaching this course in alternate years...
-
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Phil Oliver (@osopher) MTSU philosophy lecturer to speak on ‘Freedom in E...
-
Haybron 5-6-The Sources of Happiness; Beyond Happiness: Well-being [ Again, I particularly appreciate comments (etc.) posted prior to cla...