Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
I just wanted to highlight and praise this essay by Pascal Bruckner in the most recent issue of City Journal. Bruckner is relentlessly interesting -- his Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism was a very searching study of the origins and discontents of multiculturalism, which caused no small controversy in Europe. His most recent book, of which this essay is a redux, Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to be Happy, is similarly structured: It begins with an intellectual genealogy, and ends with a critique. The subject this time is our society’s move away from understanding morality as denial, restraint, and self-sacrifice, and toward a severe ethic of self-fulfillment, health, and happiness.
He finds the origin in two 1960s trends:
The first was a shift in the nature of capitalism, which had long revolved around production and the deferral of gratification, but now focused on making us all good consumers. Working no longer sufficed; buying was also necessary for the industrial machine to run at full capacity. To make this shift possible, an ingenious invention had appeared not long before, first in America in the 1930s and then in Europe in the 1950s: credit…
The second shift was the rise of individualism. Since nothing opposed our fulfillment any longer—neither church nor party nor social class—we became solely responsible for what happened to us. It proved an awesome burden: if I don’t feel happy, I can blame no one but myself. So it was no surprise that a vast number of fulfillment industries arose, ranging from cosmetic surgery to diet pills to innumerable styles of therapy, all promising reconciliation with ourselves and full realization of our potential. “Become your own best friend, learn self-esteem, think positive, dare to live in harmony,” we were told by so many self-help books…
But Bruckner has a more tragic vision of the world. Happiness is attained obliquely, in the pursuit of other goals. It is not under our direct power. So,
However well behaved we are, our bodies continue to betray us. Age leaves its mark, illness finds us one way or another, and pleasures have their way with us, following a rhythm that has nothing to do with our vigilance or our resolution.
…we are probably the first society in history to make people unhappy for not being happy.
I can’t add anything to this exquisite essay. I’ll just highlight a point that might engender controversy among conservatives. Bruckner writes:
After the American and French Revolutions (the first of which inscribed the pursuit of happiness in its founding document), the right to a decent life and the privileged status of pleasure became the order of the day for progressive movements across Europe.
So, while writing at length about our moral impoverishment in a way that appeals to conservatives, Bruckner says that one of the main sources of the problem is… the American founding. Bruckner does deliberately contrast the American Revolution’s “right” to happiness with the 1960s’ “duty” to happiness -- but the former is the latter’s origin. So the old question is raised again: What does it mean to be a traditionalist conservative in America, when America’s traditions are precisely anti-traditionalist individualism and exaltation of personal happiness?
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Jul '10
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
A lovely essay about the emptiness of the age and accolades to whoever selected that photograph to go with it. I wonder if this Frenchman understands the Constitution only affirms the right to the pursuit of happiness however the pursuer may define it.
Nov '10
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
Maybe that's why he says the first of which inscribed the pursuit of happiness in its founding document? Just a thought....
Anyway, I wan't too impressed with the article, it seemed rather larded with gross over-simplifications and generalization. Who is the "we" he keeps talking about? And all that purple prose, but maybe that's the translator....
Jun '10
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
The pursuit of happiness is a tacit admission that happiness is unattainable in any prolonged form. The human condition is to seek, and not necessarily to find. Real happiness is taking joy in that pursuit or that seeking. It is decidedly not in cocooning ourselves in hedonism, which, as with everything else in life, soon wears thin. There are near substitutes for real happiness, such as taking joy in our children and their achievements, but the very point is that it is our children that achieve and not we who achieve through them. The happiness that a parent must find is the happiness of doing the often dull and boring work that pays for an environment in which our children achieve. This is no subtle distinction. As Faustus eventually does, we must all give ourselves over to our work. This is the only joy on offer.
Oct '10
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
Happiness defined as material well being, pursued by means of consumption, is by its nature transient, for in the obtaining there is only a temporary satisfaction in what has been obtained. The biblical understanding of the pursuit of happiness is the freedom to discover and then become what it is that God has created one to be.
Jul '10
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
Prozac
Feb '11
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
I also thought this article was lame. It sounds like one of those NYTimes Style section or Sunday Magazine articles where "we" never seems to include the author. Speak for yourself, pal.
As others have said, Conservatives/Libertarians find happiness in the pursuit, and by "pursuit" we mean useful work, not running after pointless trends (unless we can make a buck off them). Perhaps it's this "work" thing that's hard for a Frenchman to understand.
And I suppose being French, he doesn't get religion either. For many people, including myself, it is the foundation of our happiness.
Edited on Mar 20, 2011 at 5:31pmOct '10
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
Well, people have to choose the right things to be happy. No one can force them--and no one ever will. Short of instituting a state religion--a government-imposed groupthink--there's no easy way out.
People get dispirited when it takes decades, even half a century, for society to self-correct. Yet, American society has an amazing capacity to do so. There are certainly good signs among people my age (by no means are all younger people stuck in an entitlement mentality).
Nov '10
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
Oh dear, this opens a whole hornet's nest and perhaps I shouldn't indulge... But I'll just say, as an unreconstructed, unapologetic disciple of Harry Jaffa, I've had it up to here with people slagging the American Founding; I'm sorry, but the Founders simply were not wholly modern, and plenty of evidence can be marshaled to show that they did not understand themselves-- nor the polity they were establishing-- as simply "Lockean," as if to say that mere self-interest is what they were all about or what the foundation of the American political order is meant to be.
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* Mere self-interest = "anti-traditionalist individualism," etc.
Edited on Mar 20, 2011 at 6:18pmNov '10
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
He might have done better if he had written on what one must do and not do to achieve happiness. He also seems to be using the wrong definition of what a happy life is about.
My thesaurus lists these words as synonyms: cheerful, cheery, merry, joyful, jovial, jolly, jocular, gleeful, carefree, untroubled, delighted, smiling, beaming, grinning, in good spirits, in a good mood, lighthearted, pleased, contented, content, satisfied, gratified, buoyant, radiant, sunny, blithe, joyous, beatific; thrilled, elated, exhilarated, ecstatic, blissful, euphoric, overjoyed, exultant, rapturous, in seventh heaven, on cloud nine, walking on air, jumping for joy, jubilant; informal chirpy, over the moon, on top of the world, tickled pink, on a high, as happy as a clam;
I’d throw most of those out as temporary moods and not the permanent state of being that happiness represents. Happiness can only be achieved through effort. Not allowing oneself to be envious of the achievement of others is a big first step, followed by developing a sense of gratitude for what one has in his life however much or little that may be. Gratitude for things that come without effort is huge. It goes on from there.
Nov '10
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
Jun '10
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
I certainly don't agree with all of Bruckner's points, but he is an original thinker who deserves to be read.
The French are easy to laugh at (much of it deserved), but they have produced some great thinkers with a right of center perspective who are worthy of study. In addition to Bruckner, look at Bertrand de Jouvenel (Daniel Mahoney recently wrote a terrific book for ISI summarizing Jouvenel's thought), Raymond Aron (Opium of the Intellectuals), and Jean-Francois Revel (How Democracies Perish and Last Exit to Utopia).
Nov '10
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
For Lent my church is using an older (and better) liturgical form, which harkens back to the form I grew up with, so just this morning I was reminded of that form. The form that I grew up with says, "It is meet and right and our bounden duty always and everywhere to give thanks to Thee . . ." There are modern psychologists who say that cultivating gratitude is a major ingredient to happiness. So perhaps, in fact, there is a moral obligation if not to happiness at least to an attitude of the heart that conduces to happiness.
Sep '10
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
Don't forget Pierre Manent when discussing French thinkers of note.
Jun '10
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
Excellent addition to the list.
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
Robert, I share your admiration for Harry Jaffa, and the West Coast Straussians generally. I didn't get to study with Jaffa as much as you did, but I got two weeks.The argument that the founding was not based on pure classical liberalism, but had deeper classical roots, is very compelling. But American culture today is nonetheless very individualistic, yes? Partly at least because the classical liberal, Lockean aspects of our founding are the most taught and known. So I don't think it's right to say there's an outright contradiction between traditionalism and Americanism. But are there at least points of tension?
Halifax and Susan: Couldn't any work of cultural commentary be susceptible to that criticism? Musn't we resort to some generalizations if we wish to talk about broad trends in the culture as a whole?
Personally, I approve the style of just saying "we now..." instead of "since 1994, 64% of adult American males..."
Nov '10
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
I agree, American culture today is very individualistic- or as I've intimated elsewhere at Ricochet, our "self-evident truth"- our regime principle- is today nihilist individuality: with respect to any public or collective teaching, reason is impotent to discover in either God or nature a standard of good that can guide man's will- the basic meaning of Nietzsche's statement that God is dead. Put differently: exclusively human law (i.e., law grounded in self-interest) without divine or natural guidance has no basis in anything other than accident or force- to allude to Hamilton's prefacing words in the Federalist. However, I'm not convinced that individuality, with respect to the American founding, is dispositive to the extent many might want to make it. I'd be hard pressed to accept that the Founders' conception of the political somehow entailed Nietzschean aestheticism/hedonism/existentialism, as this radically overlooks two significant things (1) 19th century transition out of an agrarian-based economy and the evaporation a true middle-class; such being an enabling condition of (2) the Progressives' historicist/Hegelian radical critique of politics as based on nature (cf. Voegeli, Never Enough p. 65-67).
Edited on Mar 21, 2011 at 5:08amNov '10
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
Matthew - "We" in such cases is used to appeal to those who already share the writer's point of view, or those who might be highly susceptible to it; it is more or less an exercise in groupthink. (Think of a typical Obama speech, and especially the extraordinary silliness of "We are the ones we have been waiting for.") If he wants to appeal to those who are outside that bubble, he needs to be more precise.
Otherwise, all I have to do is look around at my friends, family, and acquaintances - and they are a pretty broad lot - to realize his argument doesn't hold water. I couldn't point to a single one that has "a duty to happiness". I do know some, for example, who use anti-depressants, or who have been in extensive therapy, or belong to fundamentalist churches; but when I talk to them in depth I find that that practice is much more linked to the need to function than any particular desire to be happy. So offhand I would suggest his analysis is either just wordsmithing to attract attention, or an odd projection of some interior dissatisfaction.
Edited on Mar 21, 2011 at 6:05amFeb '11
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
Hi Matthew,
I agree that you need to make some sweeping statements in order to get initial interest, but by using "we" you're implying the reader is also one of the many, many losers that's being described. After soldiering through far too many of these articles (I'm in PR ,so it's my grim duty to read them) "we" usually means "the author's friends in Manhattan", who are only too happy to re-enforce his doom-laden views. To be fair, conservatives occasionally do the same, with their "the world is going to hell but for entirely different reasons" articles. But conservatives will usually throw in the disclaimer: "fortunately this doesn't apply to us."
Also, I don't buy his argument, not that there's much of one; he just strings together the usual cliches.
Edited on Mar 21, 2011 at 8:59amNov '10
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
Matthew- germane to this subject is a rather phenomenal essay by Charles Kesler from National Review circa 1985, "Is Conservatism Un-American?"
Sep '10
Re: Pascal Bruckner on the Duty to be Happy
Did anyone hear study with Christopher Bruell at Boston College?