happiness Category

Topics: Change Consistency Death Eternity Happiness Independence/Dependence Injustice Loss Normality Parenting Personal Identity (True Self) Questions Sacrifice Selfishness Strangeness Suffering Virtue

Philosophers: Emily Dickinson Fyodor Dostoevsky Ralph Waldo Emerson Alexander Hamilton Heraclitus Homer Franz Kafka Friedrich Nietzsche Plato Rainer Maria Rilke William Shakespeare Socrates Henry David Thoreau Ludwig Wittgenstein

A Little Bit Of Virtue Can Be A Dangerous Thing
Text: Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers

There is a saying, that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing...perhaps the same can be said of virtue.  In the 9th essay of the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton draws a picture of a sometimes-peaceful, sometimes-just state to convey his warning that an only-occasionally good political order is no good at all.  His insight points to an even further idea, that virtue without consistency can be worse than its absence altogether. Full essay.

Can One Person's Suffering Be Another Person's Happiness?
Text: Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov and Notes From The Underground

The novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky draws two impossible scenarios that together highlight the everyday reality of the potential conflicts between one's own happiness and the happiness of others.   First imagine a world that is a utopia except that it is built upon the suffering of a single child.   Then imagine a person who is willing to sacrifice the rest of the world in order to secure his own well-being.  The question, one we face on a daily basis whether we contemplate it or not, is how we experience and value our own happiness in relation to the happiness of others. Full essay.