Pascal on Happiness

Pascal sees happiness (bonheur) as the ultimate goal of all human activity, but argues that experience shows it to be unattainable; our underlying condition is unhappiness. In the immediate, he argues, human activities are forms of diversion or distraction, by which we seek to screen from ourselves our unhappiness and mortality and to gratify our vanity. This analysis omits the role of pleasure, which he elsewhere identifies as the motive force of all volition. In order to reconcile this anomaly, we need to distinguish between the motive of our actions, the ultimate end they have in view, and the Supreme Good. The motive of our actions is pleasure, their ultimate end happiness, and the Supreme Good God, in union with whom authentic happiness consists

Aesthetics · Cognitive psychology · Distraction · Happiness · Pleasure · Volition (linguistics) · French Literature and Criticism · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology

• Happiness in the Long Eighteenth Century

  Open Access•Alexander Hobday•Literature Compass•2025

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