What Is This Thing Called Happiness? - Feldman, Fred

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Résumé :
According to an ancient and still popular view -- sometimes known as 'eudaimonism' -- a person's well-being, or quality of life, is ultimately determined by his or her level of happiness. According to this view, the happier a person is, the better off he is. The doctrine is controversial in part because the nature of happiness is controversial. In What Is This Thing Called Happiness? Fred Feldman presents a study of the nature and value of happiness. Part One contains critical discussions of the main philosophical and psychological theories of happiness. Feldman presents arguments designed to show that each of these theories is problematic. Part Two contains his presentation and defense of his own theory of happiness, which is a form of attitudinal hedonism. On this view, a person's level of happiness may be identified with the extent to which he or she takes pleasure in things. Feldman shows that if we understand happiness as he proposes, it becomes reasonable to suppose that a person's well-being is determined by his or her level of happiness. This view has important implications not only for moral philosophy, but also for the emerging field of hedonic psychology. Part Three contains discussions of some interactions between the proposed theory of happiness and empirical research into happiness....

Biographie:
Fred Feldman was born near Baku, Azerbaijan as his family was fleeing from the German army during World War II. After the war, as Holocaust survivors, they eventually escaped the Soviet Union to refugee collection centers in Poland and were transferred to several displaced persons camps in Austria, where they remained for three years trying to obtain visas to immigrate to the United States. He arrived at age seven with his family in the United States, unable to speak English, and went through the public-school system in South Bend, Indiana from kindergarten through high school. Fred graduated as a high school valedictorian, attended the University of Chicago as an undergraduate and Purdue University where he received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry. From the time Feldman was a child, he developed a passion for collecting stories and photographs of his extensive and exceptional family history. As an adult, and while fully engaged in his professional activities, He conducted myriad interviews of survivors and his family, extensively documented all their photographs and history, and has conducted presentations on them. Since retirement, he has produced a four-DVD video-documentary of his family's history and used that material as a basis for writing his book. While he considers the book a memoir, it could easily fit into the genre of a non-fiction narrative. While there are a number of historical fiction books describing events of this era, there are few authors remaining that survived these experiences that can describe them with such detail and veracity and relate them to current times. While he could have grown up to be a goat herder in Azerbaijan, his progression from those horrible times to becoming a top scientist adds an interesting and unusual thread to his story. Beyond expectations from his unique beginnings, Dr. Feldman worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 30 years becoming a Senior Vice President and Chief Science Officer with global responsibilities and chairing an international world-class scientific advisory board. His expertise was in the application of science to industrial processing for the development of advanced therapeutics, especially in the treatment of life-threatening congenital inherited diseases. He developed several First-in-class products that have been registered and distributed globally. He has been invited and participated in industry conferences as a keynote speaker and presented in venues around the world.

Sommaire:
According to an ancient and still popular view -- sometimes known as 'eudaimonism' -- a person's well-being, or quality of life, is ultimately determined by his or her level of happiness. According to this view, the happier a person is, the better off he is. The doctrine is controversial in part because the nature of happiness is controversial. In What Is This Thing Called Happiness? Fred Feldman presents a study of the nature and value of happiness. Part One contains critical discussions of the main philosophical and psychological theories of happiness. Feldman presents arguments designed to show that each of these theories is problematic. Part Two contains his presentation and defense of his own theory of happiness, which is a form of attitudinal hedonism. On this view, a person's level of happiness may be identified with the extent to which he or she takes pleasure in things. Feldman shows that if we understand happiness as he proposes, it becomes reasonable to suppose that a person's well-being is determined by his or her level of happiness. This view has important implications not only for moral philosophy, but also for the emerging field of hedonic psychology. Part Three contains discussions of some interactions between the proposed theory of happiness and empirical research into happiness....