Happiness

June 27, 2022
Happiness is “elusive” and “poorly understood,” suggests Lomas (Translating Happiness), a research affiliate at Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program, in this straightforward introduction to the concept. Lomas defines happiness as “a desirable mental experience of quality, which encompasses wide swathes of psychological states relating to well-being,” and notes that the term didn’t take on that definition until the 1590s, when “burgeoning secularism began to generate new modes of inquiry.” Lomas explores what it meant to be happy in Mesopotamia (the small joys emphasized in The Epic of Gilgamesh give a good glimpse) and BCE China (when constant change was believed to be the path to well-being), as well as the role of happiness in religion, such as the joy of the mitzvah in Judaic teachings. Turning to the present, Lomas examines how happiness has been conceptualized by science, expertly drawing on genetics, neurochemistry, and psychology, and offering a taxonomy of 14 “flavors” of the emotion, including hedonic, mature, vital, evaluative, and accomplished. Lomas sagely observes that there’s “a blurry line between whether something can be deemed to create happiness... or influence it,” and while the more academic second half will best suit philosophy or psychology students, the first half will work its charm on all comers. Readers with an interest in positive psychology will find this a fine place to start.

November 1, 2022

Psychologist Lomas (research affiliate, Human Flourishing Program, Harvard; Translating Happiness: A Cross-Cultural Lexicon of Well-Being) summarizes the latest scholarship on happiness by giving a detailed analysis of this most cherished of experiences. According to the author, current research focuses on two main forms of happiness: hedonic (feeling good) and eudaemonic (producing happiness). Lomas contributes a historical perspective that explains how happiness has been understood over the centuries around the world, with various cultural interpretations of what it is or what produces it. He also points out how these cultural legacies have shaped current thinking about happiness. There's a chapter that concentrates on happiness as a concept, exploring the myriad of forms it might take through economic, philosophical and/or political factors. The author also probes current theories about the foundation and mechanics of happiness in the fields of physiology, psychology, phenomenology, and in writings on culture and society. There's also an examination of how it's shaped and applied by numerous factors in economics, politics, and sociology. The book also supplies suggestions to further study, create, and evaluate happiness. VERDICT This title belongs in social and behavioral sciences collections.--Claude Ury

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