Happiness in Early Chinese Thought

Bibliographic Data

ID20005564
AuthorsPhilip J Ivanhoe (0000-0002-9962-8150, City University of Hong Kong, corresponding author)
Year2013
Publication date2013-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueOxford Handbook of Happiness (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199557257.013.0020
OpenAlexW2691808259
ISBN9780199557257
LanguageEN
Citations received9

This chapter explores Kongzi’s (or “Confucius”) (551–479 BCE) and Zhuangzi’s (c.399–295 BCE) conceptions of the ideal life—what early Greek thinkers called eudaimonia. The author follows convention by talking about eudaimonia in terms of “happiness” but mean by “happiness” a sense that one’s life is going well, as it should, and in accord with Heavenly patterns and processes. While Kongzi and Zhuangzi both maintain that happiness fulfills an objective description of the good life, they also believe that those who attain this ideal experience a special and valuable sense of satisfaction, fulfillment, and joy as part of the good life they lead. Many of the things they say about happiness focus on the folly, harm, and misery common misconceptions of happiness produce and the importance, for both self and others, of having the right view in this regard. Both also present positive, alternative accounts of happiness

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Eudaimonia · Happiness · Harm · Ideal (ethics) · Chinese history and philosophy · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology

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