Daedalus articles from March 2004

Daedalus archives from March 2004

From the happiness of virtue to the virtue of happiness: 400 B.C.-A.D. 1780.
March 22, 2004... It is only right that Daedalus should devote an issue to happiness, seeing that its publisher was chartered with the "end and design" of cultivating "every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honour, dignity, and happiness...

The psychology of subjective well-being.
March 22, 2004... In the last few decades there has been something of a revolution in the scientific study of happiness. (1) A combination of radical new thinking and sophisticated methodology has allowed psychologists to add substantially to our understanding...

The economics of happiness.
March 22, 2004... Most of us, I think it is safe to say, would like to be happier, would like, indeed, to hold the 'keys to happiness.' For centuries the contemplation of this desire was the exclusive preserve of philosophers and theologians, who speculated and...

'Happiness' in cross-linguistic & cross-cultural perspective.
March 22, 2004... The psychologists David Myers and Ed Diener start their frequently cited article "Who is Happy" with the observation that "Books, books and more books have analyzed human misery. During its first century, psychology focused far more on negative...

Happiness as achievement.
March 22, 2004... Ten years ago, shortly after publishing a book called The Morality of Happiness about the structure of ancient ethical theory, I received an email informing me that I had been added to a bibliography of "happiness researchers" on a website...

Happiness as a Faustian bargain.
March 22, 2004... In the original version of the legend, Faust gives Mephistopheles disposal of his soul in exchange for twenty-four years of pleasure. In Christopher Marlowe's version, he becomes more demanding--he now asks for twenty-four years of pleasure...

Mill between Aristotle & Bentham.(John Stuart Mill)(Jeremy Bentham)
March 22, 2004... Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he That every man in arms should wish to be? --William Wordsworth, "Character of the Happy Warrior" Man does not strive after happiness; only the Englishman does that. --Friedrich Nietzsche, "Maxims and...

How not to buy happiness.
March 22, 2004... An enduring paradox in the literature on human happiness is that although the rich are significantly happier than the poor within any country at any moment, average happiness levels change very little as people's incomes rise in tandem over...

Can happiness be taught?
March 22, 2004... Since World War II, the field of psychology has largely focused on suffering. Psychologists now measure such formerly fuzzy concepts as depression, schizophrenia, and anger with respectable precision. We have discovered a fair amount about how...

Appearance of scandal.(Short Story)
March 22, 2004... After the screaming and the poisonous accusations, after the broken vase and rib, after the gonorrhea, waking up to find Anthony gone was not the hardest thing. It was not the hardest thing to sleep on the fluffy clown rug between the girls'...

On El Nino & the uncertain science of global warming.
March 22, 2004... Most people first heard of El Nino in 1997 when newspapers and television gave extensive coverage to various disasters associated with that phenomenon: devastating floods in California, severe droughts in Indonesia, and strange weather...

On the art of adaptation.
March 22, 2004... Despite the argument implicit in Spike Jonze's latest film, Adaptation, every age can justly claim to be an age of adaptation. The desire to transfer a story from one medium or one genre to another is neither new nor rare in Western culture. It...